Fausto's Afternoon
3/10/2003Summer is the time to wallow in the grass by a lake or river with friends, the time to hoist a few pilsners, to hide from a fast, warm storm under a linden tree with friends. Summer nighttime is for kissing her and hoping for more. It is not the time to die.
"We shouldn’t have come here on Sunday. There is a line for a mile by the beer stand," Speedy Venca Aschenbrenner complained and handed a bottle to Fausto and a canned Coke to Erika. "At least it’s cold."
All the swimmers called Adam "Fausto" for his unrestrained admiration of one Fausto Copi, the Italian cycling phenomenon, winner of two Tour de France and two Giro d’Italia, the greenish, hollow-cheeked skeleton with two massive tree trunks of legs attached and a will of steel (in the words of Adam). Adam (Fausto) was the college swimming champion. He knew about will (his own will, supposedly stainless steel, turning to watery mush when Erika lent him a smile). It was months ago when he promised himself, and swore in front of the guys, that never ever again would he start anything with her. Ever.
But she was so killingly different, with her shyness, her quiet, never-prattling voice, her strangely beautiful face without a trace of cosmetics, her forget-me-not blue eyes under that thick hair bleached harshly by the mixture of chlorine from the pool and sun to pure white gold. And her body, ladies and gentlemen, her body was sculpted to the perfect beauty of a human female by hundreds of miles of interval training for the junior record in the butterfly. Something to see! But in truth, and above all, Fausto had been keeled over in an obdurate love by her inability to playact or pretend. Yes, that was the attribute of her character that prevented any control of his heart by reason.
"Let me open it for you." Fausto reached for Erika’s Coke, looking away from her to be on the safe side. She nodded and thanked him.
Speedy Aschenbrenner mixed the cards for another poker game. "We’ll have a couple more rounds, hey, you cheaters? How about that?" The three swimmers played poker for matches, so sorry were their cash reserves (nonexistent), their total monetary worth, and the value of their diversified investment portfolios (laughter). Nevertheless, their contentment with the sunny afternoon was on their faces, enhanced by the warm breeze, perfumed with tanning oils and the scent of women in estrus, a few molecules of sweet tetrahydrocannabinol, and the strange odor of the summer stream—a composite fragrance, the dizzying breath of vacations. It was a delight to spend an afternoon on the boards of the swimming platform, "the spa," doing nothing—nothing productive or useful. Just screwing around, if you will.
With each card Fausto dealt to Erika, he laid his eyes on her breasts. Whenever he dealt a card to her, he wondered at how those pointed acromammae had been so important for his life, and how unreachable they were now, goddammit. When he got to looking higher, he marveled at those lips, of which the upper one was as full and succulent as the lower one, believe it or not. These were lips untouched by a lipstick, but surely touched by him. Oh, what a life it was, before he ruined it. He could not live with this constant tension, seeing her every day in the Club. He must decide, right on this day, either to ask her out again, to apologize for being a jerk, or just decide, today, right this afternoon, that he would never date her again, period.
Distracted, he bet and lost 20 matches. Erika took it all with a full house. She smiled at Fausto apologetically, which melted him like ice cream on this subtropical, hopeful day. Erika flipped off a spider that paraded on her ankle. A chrysalis of a damsel fly crawled over the uncut cards. Shrimp-like tiny creatures wandered on the blanket.
"Damn bugs. All over the place!" Speedy complained.
"Only primitives say ‘bugs,’ mon. They are insects. I n s e c t s," Fausto educated him.
And indeed, immature forms of aquatic beetles, larvae of dragonflies and damsel flies, wolf spiders of several species, and many hymenless Hymenoptera seemed to descend on everything. But, in fact, they did not descend; they ascended. They ascended from under the boards of the bathing plateau, which became overcrowded and sank so that the boards touched the surface of the water, driving the insects to the top of the boards, then onto the bathers, into their hairy parts, and under their bikinis, from where they were fished out by eager partners. It happens, on sunny weekends—accompanied by hysterical screams. This has to be explained further, in technical terms.
The bathing plateau, or swimming platform, or "spa," was (simply said) a gigantic raft. About 100 yards long and 30 yards wide, its deck of boards was attached snug to the shore of the river. It was kept afloat and supported by two rows of steel drums: one row along the length of the plateau on the riverside, and the other row along the shore side. Normally it floated so that the boards were nearly a foot above the water. Today, they touched the water, weighted down by the crowd of overweight citizens and their fat progeny.
* * *
A close-up view of Erika’s prominences created fantasies, which increased the metabolic rate of the susceptible Fausto. "It’s hotter than hell. Gotta go for a swim," Fausto said and got up. Speedy joined him by the edge of the platform. They stayed there, looking down at the interesting flotsam passing by on the murky stream. Opalescent, peaceful condoms were as much a part of the surface of this river as were ducklings or the dorsal fins of carp.
"I watch you, Fausto, with Erika. I see you, man." Speedy shook his head from side to side, looking for words, which was always a labor for him. "With her, you’re asking for grief, again. You know that."
"Well, I’ll swim for a while," said Fausto.
"Yeah, just think, man. Think with your head, not your ass. Or better . . . drown!" Speedy Aschenbrenner pushed Fausto into the river. Fausto half-somersaulted and disappeared under the surface.
I’ll scare you, smart ass, he thought, and started to swim underwater in the direction of the middle of the river. He was a champion collegian, his heartbeat that of a whale, his lung capacity almost double that of an age-matched male. He could hold his breath for three minutes, and he could swim 100 yards underwater.
Visibility was just inches, so he swam with his eyes closed, since vision would be as useless as to a cave-dwelling salamander. He used his legs as in a breaststroke, and his arms pulled from their forward reach all the way down to his hips. Powerful but deliberately slow, efficient strokes moved him forward at the right speed with the least exertion of energy. The swimmer felt every cell of his motor system swelling with confidence. He would emerge far into the middle of the river, somewhere between the rowboats of the Sunday fishers anchored there. Speedy would wait, for minutes, for him to emerge, and then he’d start panicking. Fun! Just keep at the right depth, Fausto! There. . . .
He felt the cold water caressing his skin and was aware of the might in his shoulders and the power of his breast muscles, the feeling pleasant and so addictive to swimmers. As each stroke finished, his arms laid along his body, palms touching his hips. He glided streamlined, smoothly, creating turbulence and maelstroms only in his wake. He moved and looked like a torpedo with a smile painted on its warhead. He brushed past a dead hen.
It might have been two minutes underwater when his body started to call for oxygen. First there was a tension in the upper chest and pressure in the belly. Fausto grinned. He knew his limits well. He knew he could swim farther, till he reached such a level of distress—when there would be pressure like a fist pushing into his belly and pain like a claw squeezing his chest—that it would become too much for just a joke. Then he would emerge.
When the true hurt and spasm arrived, Fausto continued for three more powerful strokes in the murky deep and then charged up to the surface. There, his head smashed into a hard object. His closed eyes saw a flash of bright blue light—which instantly went out, into darkness. His body went as limp as a freshly drowned man. Then he recovered, opened his eyes, and looked up. He recognized the lines of light, spars between the boards. He was trapped under the swimming platform.
He pushed his lips under the planks, hoping for air. Today the planks, weighted by the crowd, were touching the water. There was no air for Fausto.
* * *
For Fausto, in his second decade of life, death had been mostly a remote proposition but always feared, an unimaginably horrifying possibility. Submerged in the coldness of the dark brown fluid, his mind acquired a sudden lucidity without the terror he had always imagined. Now I will die!
It was a calm thought, followed by a realization that he might survive if he chose the right one of two possible directions to continue his swim. One led to the river, and to life. The other, opposite way, led to shore, where the platform-supporting drums were touching bottom. Taking that bearing would result in death by drowning. Both directions were 90 degrees perpendicular to the length of the boards. It was a gamble with even odds, Russian roulette being child’s play by comparison.
Fausto started to swim. Still, there was no dread choking him, just a feeling of regret, of sadness, which was not overwhelming. He realized, with amazement, that the pangs of pain and spasms by which his body demanded air were gone. He had no need to breathe! He was impressed by his strokes being still efficient, but after a while (his perception of time had acquired an unknown, novel character) he felt that his legs had decreased their performance and had begun to drag. He was slowing down, involuntarily. He continued to concentrate solely on the efficiency of his strokes, as if that was the most important thing in his life. Still no need for air.
And then the top of his head thumped into a hard obstacle with a blow that reverberated through his body. With a mournful timbre like the boom of a hollow drum, it announced the end of his journey. The swimmer knew only that the drum was either one of the supporting floats along the shore, or one of those along the open river. (The exact number of strokes at the swimmer’s disposal was finite and a secret known only to the gods. If he was forced to turn around because he hit the shore drum, quite soon the very last stroke would be performed, but by the body only. By then, the brain would be devoid of consciousness, which some call the soul, so the young man Fausto would have ceased to exist. The last stroke would be a dead man’s stroke.)
At the moment of impact, all thoughts escaped with the stream of bubbles from his nose. More instinct than conscious thought directed him to dive deeper, under the drum, despite the disobedience and protest from his muscles. He emerged in the river, into an atmosphere syrup-thick with sweet oxygen, under the sun spanning over the whole, wide dome of the sky. He did not gasp for air but had to force himself to inhale and exhale with the right rhythm. He held, with one hand, onto the edge of the boards, hanging there, not thinking. Fausto spotted a ladder, crawled up onto the platform, and sat down, his feet dangling in the water that had released the swimmer a minute ago as a reward for his conditioned physique, like that of a leopard seal, and for his sane, secular presence of mind.
When he managed to stand up, Erika was in front of him, watching him with curiosity written on her face. Fausto saw that her hair was violet, her eyes salmon pink, her cleavage of a more rosy tint. He looked at the sky to confirm the alteration in his vision (from overreaction to bright light by his red receptors, from a hypoxic retina) and saw it emblazoned red as if by reflected fire, the boulders of its summer cumuli colored aubergine. He lowered his eyes to look at his nails. Their beautiful sheen and reddish-gold tinge was identical to that on antique ivory rubbed for years on the wrists of Africans.
"Speedy said he lost you. He’ll pick you up tonight, for training, he said. You look strange, Fausto."
"I’m OK. It’s nice you waited for me."
"Where were you?" Erika asked.
"Oh, nowhere. I was . . . I almost . . . was nowhere. I’ll tell you sometime, later," Fausto said, turning his sight away from her carmine eyes.
He took a deep breath, leaned on the railing of the plateau and marveled at the crimson heavens. He pondered, maybe, his future in the wonderful rosy world of the sporting life and lovers’ sighs. His smile grew wide and wider as he reached for her waiting hand, the hue of dusty rose.
 | | | |  | | About the Contest and Its Winner | Jaroslav (Jarda) Cervenka was a professor of medical genetics at the University from 1968 through 2000. He first came to the University in 1965 as a visiting professor and student. Born and raised in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Cervenka has lived in Kenya, Japan, and Nigeria and has traveled extensively on five continents. His views and his writing have been influenced, he says, "by studies of diverse people and their culture, or lack of it." He has won many awards for his fiction, and has published two collections of short stories. He has also written another collection of stories, a novel, and a book for young readers. He lives with his wife, Sasha, in Golden Valley, Minnesota.
Minnesota magazine’s annual fiction contest is open to all University of Minnesota alumni. An independent judge selects the winner from a group of finalists culled by the editorial staff of Minnesota. The winning entry is published in the magazine and its author is awarded a cash prize. Watch future issues of Minnesota for guidelines for entering our next fiction contest.
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