Free Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras

feelings (unlike games of Risk, which are interchangeable, Goofy was an anthropomorphic toy, and so the Midget’s relationship with it was personal and non-transferable), but also a matter of practicalities. The Midget always slept with Goofy in his arms, and while it was one thing to snuggle up witha soft, well-worn cuddly toy, trying to hug a piece of hard, bumpy plastic was a very different matter. All boys love toy trucks, but they don’t use them as pillows.

25
WE ASSUME NEW IDENTITIES
    Papá had another trick up his sleeve. He made a number of concessions (promising to play a game of Risk with me as soon as the table was cleared; reassuring the Midget that the new Goofy was a distant cousin of his old Goofy and that it would get softer over time the same way people get softer when they become friends), and managed to appease us sufficiently so that we were prepared to listen to his explanation, one which, in the weeks that followed, we would come to understand.
    For papá, it was not enough that we wouldn’t be at home, at the office, at school. Holing up in this villa on the outskirts of Buenos Aires (the ‘island’ mamá claimed we had been washed up on) was a necessary precaution, but not the only one. However much we might want to be, we were not invisible. There were probably people living in the neighbouring houses, a travelling salesman might knock at the door at any minute, people who regularly walked past the house were bound to notice – from the rubbish bags, the smells, the noise – that new tenants had moved in.
    Given all this, we had to be prepared in case we should run into someone. We had to be discreet and try not to attract attention, but if we were noticed, it was important that nobody would knowwho we really were. And what better defence could there be than pretending to be someone else?
    We had to assume new identities. Like spies who pretend not to be spies so they don’t fall into enemy clutches. Like Batman, hiding his secret identity beneath his mild-mannered alter ego. Like Odysseus tricking the Cyclops by telling him his name was ‘Noman’. Odysseus was a born escape artist. To escape Polyphemus, the Cyclops who had vowed to eat his men, Odysseus first got him drunk on wine and then plunged a spear into his one eye, blinding him. When the other Cyclops heard Polyphemus scream in pain, they asked who had hurt him. ‘No-man,’ replied Polyphemus, so the other Cyclops, thinking his pain must be a plague sent by Zeus, told him to accept his fate.
    Papá was counting on the fact that this part of the plan would get me excited. Becoming other people was the key element in all of our games. Cowboys or monsters, superheroes or dinosaurs, even when we played sports we pretended to be other people.
    But what papá had not counted on was the fact that my mind worked faster than any set of rules, and faster than common sense. In a matter of seconds the whole universe of possibilities offered by this opportunity to become someone else lay before me, and I found myself standing before a shining, tantalizing doorway papá had not thought of, and one which clearly took him by surprise.
    Suddenly hopeful, I said that if I became a different person, that meant I’d be able to phone Bertuccio. I was convinced that if he listened carefully, Bertuccio would work out it was me even if I told him my name was Otto von Bismarck, and obviously he’d work out that there was some kind of emergency, so he’d play along with these new rules. We could even invent a secret language!
    At this point, mamá immediately became the Rock and dashed my hopes. The embargo, she said, still applied. ‘You are not to call Bertuccio under any circumstances, even if you tell him your nameis Mandrake the magician, full stop, end of story. Saints alive!’ (Over time, this was to become the Midget’s favourite saint; he fully expected to see St Salive