Saturday begins before dawn.
Esteban opens his eyes, and it takes him a few seconds to recognize the ceiling of his apartment. He has slept in his clothes, on top of the bedspread, with his shoes at the foot of the bed and a white envelope beneath the telephone. The night before, he checked three times that the envelope was still there. Now he checks again. Inside are the two wedding rings.
On the other side of Montevideo, Fabiana sits on the floor of her old bedroom beside a green-covered photograph album. Her mother sleeps on the other side of the wall. It is still dark in the house on Portugal Street, but she does not need to turn on the light to find the photograph she is looking for. She knows which page it is on.
Two children pose in front of a little square. He has a ball under his arm and is looking away. She watches him with a seriousness beyond her twelve years. Fabiana runs her thumb along the edge of the photograph. Then she closes the album, leaves it on the bed, and looks at herself in the mirror. She is getting married at eleven.
There should be no reason to doubt. Yet ever since January, whenever she imagines the ceremony, she sees a girl in a blue dress walking toward the water.
When Esteban is eight, life fits inside the four blocks surrounding the little square at Venezuela and Minas. He knows the loose paving stones, the height of every curb, the times when the neighbors water the sidewalks. Football matches end when the light runs out or someone's mother appears to drag him home to dinner.
Fabiana lives a block away. She is three years older, which makes her seem almost out of reach to Esteban. She goes out with her friends to sit in doorways and appears to pay no attention to the boys chasing a ball. He plays so she will see him. She always sees him, though she never lets him know.
The best moment comes when the others suggest playing hide-and-seek. Football no longer matters then, and the neighborhood turns into a secret map: a parked car, a dark entrance hall, the gap between two walls. Esteban looks for places where they can hide together. Fabiana pretends to find them by chance.
One night, crouching behind a car, they hear their friends running on the other side of the street.
“Your brother's going to come looking for us,” Esteban whispers.
“He's hiding with the others.”
“He's always following us.”
“Because he thinks you know the best places.”
Esteban looks over the hood. He sees no one. He turns back and discovers that Fabiana is watching him.
“I want to tell you something.”
“Then tell me.”
The words are harder for him than anything he has ever done.
“I like you.”
Fabiana lowers her eyes. Her knees are covered in dust.
“I like you too.”
Esteban feels a blow to his chest, as if a ball has just struck him.
“Will you be my girlfriend?”
“I have to think about it.”
For the rest of the game, he does not dare ask what that means. The next day he finds her again in the little square. She says yes. They part without touching, as if they have signed an agreement too important to celebrate. Then Esteban commits his first act of foolishness in love: he spends four days without leaving the house.
When the doorbell finally rings, it is Fabiana waiting downstairs.
“Are you sick?” she asks.
“No.”
“Are you being punished?”
“I have to study.”
“You never study this much.”
He searches for a more convincing excuse, but she comes closer and kisses him on the lips, briefly and awkwardly. Esteban closes his eyes too late.
“That's how you say hello to your girlfriend,” Fabiana says.
Then she leaves, abandoning him in the doorway with the feeling that the world has just changed size.
For two years there is no summer without the waterfront promenade, no rainy afternoon without calls from one house telephone or another, no quarrel that survives a meeting on the sidewalk. Then Esteban's parents move to Piriápolis. Fabiana's leave the neighborhood a little later. Letters get lost between new addresses and childhood promises. When they stop coming, neither knows how to find the other.
Ten years pass.
Esteban returns to Montevideo and rents a small apartment on Salvador Ferrer Serra Street. He works as a swimming instructor and studies as much as he can. By asking around among former neighbors, he manages to get a telephone number. He dials without knowing whether Fabiana still lives there. The woman who answers is twenty-three, but he recognizes her voice before she says her name.
They meet at Tres Cruces Terminal. Fabiana arrives first. She stands beside a shop window, a black bag over her shoulder. Esteban walks past her twice because he is expecting a twelve-year-old girl, not the woman who raises her head when she sees him.
“You look different,” he says.
“So do you.”
He sees Fabiana smiling. Then he notices that she is crying.
They sit down for coffee, but barely touch it. They talk about Piriápolis, their families, jobs that do not pay enough to live on, and things they remember differently. When Esteban mentions the car they hid behind, Fabiana corrects him about its color. When she says it was a Friday, he insists it was a Saturday. Neither can prove it.
“What now?” he asks after an hour.
“Now we finish our coffee.”
“That's not what I mean.”
Fabiana pushes her cup aside.
“It's not what I mean either.”
They kiss in the middle of a terminal full of people coming and going who know nothing about them.
Two years later, they still cannot afford to rent a place together. Esteban takes on extra shifts at the pool, and when summer comes, he finds work as a lifeguard at Malvín Beach. Fabiana studies haute couture, does alterations for women in the neighborhood, and keeps whatever banknotes she can set aside in a biscuit tin. They want to get married. Sometimes they talk about a small house with a yard. At other times, they do not even dare set a date.
The summer that changes everything begins like any other.
In mid-January, in unusually unbearable heat, the wind blows from the east and raises a fine foam on the water. The beach is crowded, but opposite Isla de las Gaviotas, one stretch has been kept clear. Early that morning, a large tent was put up there, along with white beach umbrellas and ropes marking an unobtrusive perimeter. Esteban watches men in lightweight suits, women wearing accreditation badges, and two girls who run straight to the sand get out of several vehicles. He has been told that a foreign delegation will be spending a few hours on the beach. Nothing more.
A story circulates over the lifeguards' radios that the family has ties to the Norwegian crown. Esteban is less concerned with who the visitors are than with the lateral current forming near the sandbar. For the third time that morning, he asks some swimmers to move closer to shore.
Fabiana arrives shortly after noon with a bag of fruit and a bottle of cold water. She stays beside the tower while Esteban watches the sea.
“You've got an important audience today,” she says, pointing at the tent as she takes off her clothes until she is down to her bikini.
“The water doesn't care who you are.”
“What a solemn thing to say.”
“It's true.”
Fabiana offers him a mandarin.
“When you're rich and famous, try to keep speaking to me.”
“If I get rich, we'll buy the house.”
“With a yard.”
“Obviously. With a yard.”
“And no going back to live with our parents.”
He smiles. Before he can answer, he hears a scream.
A woman runs from the tent. She does not head toward the group of men watching the perimeter, but straight toward him. She carries her sandals in one hand and wears an expression Esteban recognizes at once: that of someone who has understood something terrible a few seconds before everyone else.
“There are two girls in the water! They can't get back!”
Esteban has already seen them before the woman speaks.
Beyond the breakers, he makes out a head that disappears. Another rises a few yards to the left. Both girls are far too close to the channel where the bottom drops away abruptly. The wind carries their cries toward the waterfront promenade.
“Call emergency services,” he tells Fabiana. “And alert the other stations.”
She runs toward the tower. Esteban grabs the rescue tube and goes into the water. The first waves hit him in the chest. Then he swims in long strokes, leaning into the current. He hears a voice shouting something in a language he does not understand. He sees a fair-haired girl struggling to keep her mouth above water. A small arm appears near her.
“Look at me!” Esteban shouts. “I'm coming to you!”
The girl does not answer. She goes under again. When Esteban reaches her, he dives, finds a shoulder, and pulls upward. She surfaces, coughing. She clings to him so fiercely that she pins one of his arms. Esteban manages to get the rescue tube under her chest.
“Breathe. Hold on to this. Don't let go of me.”
The girl points to something behind him. Esteban turns. Beneath the surface he sees a flash of blue. A second girl is trying to come up, but the current sweeps her sideways. For an instant, her fingers are within reach of his. Esteban stretches out his hand and feels the brush of cold skin. The first girl struggles on the tube, slips off, and swallows water again. He has to catch her. When he looks again, the blue has disappeared.
“Here!” he shouts to the lifeguards coming to help him. “There's another girl here!”
He hands the first girl to one of his colleagues and dives. He searches through swirls of sand, keeps his eyes open until they burn, comes up for air, and dives again. The bottom seems to shift with every wave. Once he thinks he has caught a piece of fabric, but all he brings up is seaweed. The other lifeguards call to him from the surface. Esteban does not answer. When they finally drag him toward the beach, his lips are numb and his lungs are on fire. He breaks free, tries to go back into the water, and falls to his knees.
On the shore, a blond girl breathes through an oxygen mask. A man in a suit kneels beside her. Several journalists who appear out of nowhere raise their phones. Farther away, a woman in a white uniform pushes through the onlookers and asks about someone. She asks once. Then again. No one answers her.
Esteban realizes that she is the second girl's mother.
They find the body at dusk. The girl's name is Nora. She is eleven years old. Her mother works on the delegation's domestic staff and has brought her from Norway because she had no one to leave her with during the school holidays. The rescued girl's name is Liv, and she is nothing less than a princess.
Over the following days, the news shows Esteban emerging from the water with Liv in his arms again and again. The photograph, taken by someone on the beach, appears on front pages and news broadcasts. They speak of the Uruguayan lifeguard who saved an heiress to the Norwegian crown. One presenter calls him a national hero. Another says that he risked his life to protect a girl he did not even know.
Of Nora, they say barely a sentence: “Another minor lost her life in the incident.” Fabiana turns off the television the third time she hears those words.
“You're there,” she tells Esteban, who stands motionless beside the window. “You can explain what happened.”
“I've already explained.”
“To the doctors and the police. Not to those people.”
“I don't want to talk to anyone.”
He has gone back to the beach twice. The first time to collect his things. The second, at night, to walk to the place where he entered the water. He cannot recognize it. The tide has erased every mark. When he tries to sleep, he does not see Liv. He sees fingers slipping between his own. One night before dawn, Fabiana finds him sitting on the bathroom floor. The shower is running, though he is not under it.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought I might remember whether I reached her.”
“Who?”
“Nora. I don't know whether I held her hand or whether I'm making it up.”
Fabiana turns off the water. She sits down facing him.
“Esteban, there were two girls. You saved one.”
“The other one was right there.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't know.”
He covers his eyes.
“For one second I had them both in front of me. One second. And I chose the one I was holding.”
“You didn't choose who was going to die.”
“But I let go of her hand.”
Fabiana cannot find an answer that will take those words away from him. She stays beside him until dawn begins to break.
A week later, an official from the delegation comes to the apartment on Salvador Ferrer Serra Street. She brings a letter of thanks, an invitation to a future ceremony, and an offer of financial assistance. She speaks gently. She mentions no specific sum, but says it would be enough to make a different beginning possible for Esteban. He looks at the envelope with the coat of arms printed on it.
“What is expected of me?”
“Nothing you haven't already done. His Majesty wishes to thank you in person when a visit can be arranged.”
“And Nora's mother?”
The official brings her hands together.
“The family will receive support through the appropriate channels.”
“That's not what I asked. Will she be at the ceremony?”
“The ceremony is intended to recognize your part in rescuing the princess.”
“There were two girls.”
“We are aware of the tragedy.”
“Then you'll have to say their names.”
The woman falls silent. Then she explains that official statements must be carefully prepared, that there are protocols, that the situation is delicate. Esteban hears every word, but none answers his question. When she leaves, she puts the envelope on the table. Fabiana opens it once she is alone with him. She reads the letter. For a long time she studies the still-vague offer of support that would allow the two of them to establish a home.
“It could be our house,” she says.
Esteban does not answer.
“I'm not saying we have to accept it. I'm just saying it could be.”
He takes the envelope and puts it in a drawer.
For the first time since they found each other again, an entire night passes without either saying good night.
In February, Esteban meets Nora's mother.
Her name is Solveig. He finds her after writing to several addresses supplied by the embassy and receiving a brief reply. She agrees to meet him in a café near the port. She arrives alone, wearing a coat far too heavy for the heat of Montevideo, a small notebook in her hands.
“I don't want an interview,” she tells him before sitting down.
“Neither do I.”
“Then what do you want?”
Esteban looks at the notebook. There is a sticker on its cover: a crooked gold star.
“I want to tell you exactly what I remember.”
It takes Solveig a while to nod. He speaks of the wind, of the girls separated by the current, of the rescue tube. He explains how he found Liv and where he saw Nora. He does not try to conceal the instant when he loses her hand. When he finishes, he lays his hands open on the table.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “I don't know how many times I can tell you.”
Solveig does not cry. She keeps looking at a stain on the tabletop.
“Nora was afraid of deep water,” she replies after a while. “As soon as it reached her knees, she wanted to come back. There was always a reason. She would say she could see crabs, that the water was cold, that her skin itched.”
Esteban waits.
“That day she went in because Liv couldn't get out. I saw her run. I shouted for her to come back. She didn't hear me, or she didn't want to.”
Solveig runs a finger over the star on the notebook.
“Everyone tells me my daughter was brave. I didn't need her to be brave. I needed her to come back.”
Esteban lowers his head.
“I'm not asking you to forgive me.”
“I have nothing to forgive you for. You didn't take the girls into the water.”
He raises his eyes.
“But I let go of her.”
“And if you hadn't held on to Liv, perhaps you'd be speaking to two mothers now.”
The words do not console him. Nor do they seem to have been spoken to console him. Solveig opens the notebook. Between its pages she keeps a folded drawing done in colored pencil. It shows a red-roofed house beside an impossibly blue sea. In the doorway stand a woman, a girl, and a dog that looks like no known animal.
“Nora wanted a house like that,” she says. “She used to say we'd buy one someday, with a room for each of us. It didn't matter which country it was in.”
Esteban studies the picture. He thinks of the biscuit tin where Fabiana keeps their savings for a house of their own. For the first time he understands that the loss is not only a dead girl. It is also everything that girl was going to live and will never live now.
“I'll say her name,” he promises.
Solveig closes the notebook.
“Say it because she existed, not to make yourself feel better.”
The invitation arrives in August. The ceremony will be held in Montevideo during a private visit to Uruguay by the royal family. They have chosen a Saturday in October. Esteban recognizes the date at once: it is the day he and Fabiana hope to have their civil wedding. The officials offer to adjust the times. They also announce that the expression of gratitude will include a definite sum of financial assistance. It would allow them to pay for a substantial part of a home. Esteban takes the letter to the house on Portugal Street.
Fabiana is working on a simple wedding dress, without embroidery or embellishments. When she sees him come in, she puts her needle down on the table.
“What's wrong?”
He shows her the date.
“We can say no,” she replies.
“Or we can go.”
“What for?”
“So they'll hear what happened.”
Fabiana looks at the envelope.
“What if they won't let you speak?”
“Then I'll leave.”
“They're going to offer you money.”
“I know.”
“It's money we need.”
Esteban sits down. For a few seconds he seems twenty-two and eight years old at the same time, like the boy who once stopped going out because he did not know how to face a girl he liked.
“If I accept it without saying anything, I'll think of Nora every time I open the door to that house.”
Fabiana takes off her thimble. She is tired. She has spent the winter doing alterations by the piece, and some nights she has fallen asleep with her sewing on her knees. She knows exactly what it costs to buy a roof over their heads and how far they are from managing it.
“I don't want you to confuse being alive with owing someone something,” she says.
“That's not what this is about.”
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it seems as if you want to be punished for coming out of the sea.”
He does not answer.
“I don't want to marry a hero,” Fabiana continues. “I want to marry you. And you're still here, though most of the time it doesn't feel that way.”
Esteban rests his hands on the table beside the dress.
“I'm afraid that one day you'll look at me and only see what I did wrong.”
“I'm looking at you now.”
It is the first time they have spoken of the fear they have shared since January. Fabiana comes closer and takes his hand.
“Go to the ceremony,” she says. “But not to look for punishment or a reward. Go and tell them what you know. Take all that weight off your shoulders, leave it at the ceremony, and then come and marry me.”
The agreement seems simple. Getting to Saturday proves much harder.
On the eve of the ceremony, Esteban receives a call from a hotel in Carrasco. A girl wishes to speak to him. There is a pause, voices in Norwegian, the sound of a chair moving.
“Esteban?” asks a small voice in careful Spanish.
“Yes.”
“It's Liv.”
He goes still.
“Hello, Liv.”
“They told me you're going to be there tomorrow.”
“It looks that way. I mean, yes, of course I'll be there.”
The girl is silent. Then she asks:
“Do you remember Nora?”
Esteban feels his hands grow cold.
“Every day.”
“So do I.”
In the background, a woman can be heard trying to say something to the girl. Liv answers with a single firm word.
“I want to tell you something,” she says. “When I fell, Nora came back for me. I told her to go away. She pushed me up. Then I saw your face.”
Esteban closes his eyes. In his memory the water always holds the same shape: a body clinging to the tube, fingers disappearing.
“It wasn't your fault, Liv.”
“That's what everyone tells me.”
The line falls silent. Esteban thinks the call has ended. He takes the telephone from his ear, looks at it, and puts it back where it was. He waits until the girl speaks again.
“Why does no one say she saved me first?”
It takes him a while to answer.
“Tomorrow I'll say it.”
“So will I.”
When he hangs up, Esteban stays seated in front of the telephone until Fabiana arrives with his clothes for the ceremony. He tells her about the conversation without trying to interpret it. She listens, then opens the wardrobe. She takes out a suit she has managed to alter for him after several attempts.
“Try it on,” she says. “I'm not marrying a man whose suit hangs off his shoulders.”
For the first time in months, Esteban smiles.
The October Saturday dawns clear. Esteban tries calling the house on Portugal Street three times, but no one answers. Fabiana is in her bedroom looking at the old photograph album while her mother makes breakfast and the telephone rings in an empty room. By the time she notices it, it is too late to call back: she has to get dressed.
Esteban arrives at the ceremony shortly before nine. The room overlooks the waterfront promenade. There are flowers, flags, cameras, and a small stage. He is shown where to sit. An official explains the order of the speeches and hands him some printed remarks in case he would prefer to read them. His name appears in the text six times. Nora's, not once.
“This isn't what I'm going to say,” he warns.
The man answers with an uncomfortable smile.
“We understand. A brief expression of thanks is expected.”
“It'll be brief.”
A few yards away, Liv comes in holding her mother's hand. She wears neither a crown nor jewelry. She is a fair-haired girl in a gray dress and black shoes. When she recognizes Esteban, she raises her hand and smiles shyly. He returns the greeting. The ceremony begins. They speak of cooperation, of friendship between countries, of courage. Esteban hears fragments. He thinks of the street where he lived as a boy, of the kiss Fabiana gave him in the doorway, of Solveig's voice saying she had not needed a brave daughter. At last they call him.
He goes up onto the stage to applause. He waits for it to end and lays the printed pages on the lectern.
“I'm being thanked for saving a girl's life,” he begins. “It's true. I brought her out of the water, and I'm grateful that she's still here.” He looks at Liv. “But there were two girls in the sea that day.”
Someone moves a chair. The cameras keep recording.
“The other girl's name was Nora. She was eleven. She went into the water because her friend was in danger. When I arrived, Nora was already trying to help her. I managed to take hold of her, but I lost her. I never found her alive again.”
Esteban swallows.
“I don't want to be remembered as the man who saved a princess if telling that story means we have to forget the girl who died trying to do the same thing.”
He steps away from the microphone. There is no applause. For a few seconds no one seems to know what they ought to do. Then a chair shifts in the front row. Liv stands up. The woman beside her tries to stop her, but the girl walks steadily toward the stage. An assistant steps forward to help her up the steps. Liv approaches the microphone, which is too high for her. Esteban lowers it.
“Nora was my friend,” she says in slow Spanish. “She was afraid of going where she couldn't touch the bottom. I told her I could swim well, and she asked me not to go so far out.”
She turns to the audience.
“I didn't listen to her.”
The silence in the room changes. It is no longer the discomfort of an interruption, but the attention owed to someone saying something difficult.
“When I couldn't get back, she came. She held me up. I'm here because Nora helped me and because Esteban came afterward. I don't want people to say I was brave. I want them to say Nora was.”
Liv's mother stands up. She does not interrupt her daughter. She approaches the lectern and waits for the girl to finish. Then she embraces her. A photographer lowers his camera. Esteban looks for Fabiana, although he knows she cannot be there. She must be finishing getting ready for the wedding. For the first time since January, he wants to arrive at the agreed time. On his way out, an official hands him the envelope with the financial assistance once again. She explains that the offer still stands. He is about to refuse, but stops.
“I want to speak to Solveig before deciding anything,” he replies.
“Of course.”
“And I want whatever happens with that money never again to depend on someone keeping silent.”
The official nods. This time she does not try to change the subject.
When Esteban reaches the Civil Registry office, it is seven minutes to eleven. Fabiana waits beside a window. She wears the dress she has made over the winter. It is simple, white, and a little shorter than he had imagined. Her hands are empty: no flowers, no bag, no photograph album.
“You came,” she says.
“I told you I would.”
“You also said you weren't going to be nervous.”
Esteban holds out his fingers. They are trembling.
“I lied about that.”
Fabiana kisses his cheek. Then she straightens his lapel. He notices that her eyes are red.
“Did you see the ceremony?”
“Your mother found it on television. We watched it together.”
“I didn't know whether I'd done the right thing.”
“I did.”
Esteban takes a deep breath.
“We don't have the house.”
“We never did.”
“Maybe we won't take the money either.”
“We'll talk about it. Today we have something else to do.”
They go into the room. The witnesses are seated. The official asks for their identity documents and begins to read. Outside, traffic moves on beneath the spring sunshine. No one brings the city to a halt for a wedding.
Esteban hears his full name and then Fabiana's. When they are asked whether they agree to marry, he thinks for an instant of the two children hiding behind a car, too frightened to kiss.
“I do,” he answers.
Fabiana smiles.
“I do.”
The rings pass from one hand to another. There is a signature, a stamp, and two embraces. It all takes less time than they have spent waiting. On their way out, they discover a woman seated at the end of the corridor. She wears a dark dress and holds a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. Esteban recognizes her at once.
“Solveig.”
She stands up.
“I hope I'm not too late.”
Fabiana goes over and greets her. Neither of them knew she was coming.
“I saw the ceremony,” Solveig says. “Liv called me last night. She insisted that she wanted to speak. I thought perhaps I ought to be nearby today.”
She turns to Esteban.
“Thank you for saying my daughter's name.”
He tries to answer, but Solveig hands him the parcel.
“It isn't an expensive gift. Nora bought this a few days before the accident. She'd been saving because she wanted to take home a pretty souvenir of Uruguay. After what happened, I put it away. I didn't know what to do with it.”
Fabiana carefully removes the paper. Inside are two small ceramic figures: a boy with a ball and a girl in a blue dress. They are imperfect, hand-painted ornaments of the kind sold at tourist stalls.
“She chose them together,” Solveig explains. “She said they looked like two people who loved each other very much. I don't know why she bought them. Sometimes children see something and simply need it.”
Esteban looks at the figures. They do not look like him or Fabiana. They are two ordinary objects, made to end up forgotten on a shelf. Solveig goes over to the window. There seems to be something else she is struggling to say.
“When Nora was small, she liked me to call her little princess. Then she grew older and started telling me that princesses didn't really exist, that they were people you saw in magazines. I kept calling her that, especially when she was angry with me.”
Her voice breaks, but she continues.
“In Norway, before we came here, she asked me to stop. She said she was grown up now. That was our last silly disagreement. And now... now I can't call her that again to annoy her.”
Fabiana sets the figures on the windowsill and embraces Solveig. The woman clings to her. Esteban stays close without intervening. No words are equal to that loss. A few minutes later, Solveig says goodbye. The newlyweds walk her to the door. Outside, sunlight falls full on the sidewalk.
“What will you do about the assistance?” she asks before leaving.
Esteban looks at Fabiana.
“We still don't know.”
Solveig nods.
“Then decide as you go on living. Don't spend your lives asking permission to be happy.”
She walks toward a car waiting for her at the curb. Esteban and Fabiana stay in front of the building, holding hands. Nearby, a couple walks past with a boy carrying a ball under his arm. The little boy runs toward the corner. His mother calls him, and he comes back without protesting.
“Where are we going?” Fabiana asks.
“Home.”
“Which one?”
Esteban takes a moment to answer. Then he points to the figures Fabiana has put in her bag.
“Whichever one we can start making our own.”
They walk away along the sidewalk, with no official photographs, no guards, no ceremonial cars. As they turn the corner, Fabiana stops and kisses him as she did that first night, when he came downstairs without knowing what to do with the love she offered him. Esteban closes his eyes in time. This time, when he opens them again, she is still there. He smiles. For the first time since that summer, he allows himself to be happy.
But even now, glad though he is to have saved a princess, his thoughts return to the little princess of Norway.
THE END