Life

The boy is silent. He peers cautiously, over the tall grasses, toward the near edge of the river. The water, clean and shallow, slides slowly over stones covered with green slime. Blending into this background, resting its corpulence, lies the enormous and majestic toad. It’s invisible to an ordinary eye, but evident to Hector, a master at spotting toads, frogs, iguanas, and turtles.

He crawls forward, his knees sinking into the mud, thinking of the envy his classmates will feel if he manages to catch that beautiful specimen. “What a big and ugly toad!” they’ll say to him. He’ll walk proudly, carrying in his hands the great king of the river pool. One more step and it’ll be within jumping reach. Veronica will look at him fascinated, with disgust for the toad and admiration for him. “What a yucky toad you brought, Hector!” she’ll say to him. And the sweetness of her voice will make this reproach sound like an intimate compliment. He already feels it close, he’s almost there… almost there… Now! The boy jumps like a cat, with his hands stretched out toward the toad, and falls face-first on the green stones and into the cool water that splashes in a thousand glistening drops under the midday sun. The toad is trapped, helpless between the boy’s careful little hands.

Soaked and sore, he stands up. He lifts the toad with satisfaction, and contemplates for a long time the thrashing of its legs suspended in the air. He’s fascinated by its enormous size. It’ll definitely be the envy of the class. Even more: it’ll be the envy of the whole school. How lucky to have caught it! All morning—from the very moment teacher Angelica said, at the end of Science class, that they had to bring a toad the next day—the restless boy had done nothing but think about that huge and beautiful toad that he had seen so many times swimming, jumping, eating mosquitoes… and what not! He knew it very well. He knew every spot on its body, every wrinkle. He knew its habits. He delighted in watching, hidden in the bush, the toad playing in the quiet river pool. It was like a companion on his lazy afternoons. And now he had the opportunity to show it off like a trophy in front of Veronica.

“You’ll see how beautiful she is! She looks like a little angel,” whispers little Hector next to the wet head of the toad, who responds with nothing more than a quick and frightened blink.

With great care, he puts the animal in a plastic bag, and rides his old bicycle, which squeaks over the dirt road like a wounded wild hog, until he reaches the mud-and-cane house, lost in the middle of the grazing field.

---

Hector arrives at school early that day, before everyone. “Wake me up early, Mama, because I want to be the very first!” he’d told her the night before, as he put the toad in an old tractor tire cut in half and filled with water, where the chickens quench their thirst during the day. The little boy had jumped out of bed. He’d showered quickly, in the rustic outdoor shower, with the stars shining above his head. He ate his breakfast—a small cup of coffee, half a sweet corn tortilla—rinsed his mouth and rode off happily on his bicycle, when barely a hint of sunrise could be glimpsed over the distant hills.

Hector waits at the door of the classroom, with his toad in the plastic bag, wetting it from time to time to keep it comfortable. The toad stirs inside, restless from all the bustle. One by one his classmates arrive, and to each he shows his sturdy toad.

“Look at my little toad!” he shouts to each one as they arrive.

The reaction is the same each time: expression of astonishment, indecorous exclamation, and the invariable, immediate request:

“Let me see it, let me carry it! Pretty please1, Hector!”

And each time Hector refuses, indignant, selfish, master of the situation, rejoicing in his heart at the envy and the general uproar. A crowd of children in uniform gathers around him and his toad. When teacher Angelica arrives, she peeks curiously into the circle of children. And after the initial fright, she congratulates the smiling Hector on his great find.

“It’s a little old, Hector, but it will do,” she says as she pats his tousled head.

The boy, full of pride, nods his head.

The teacher opens the door. The children enter and take their seats.

“Put your toads on the table, children.”

Chuckles flutter through the classroom. The toads come out of pockets, bags, jars, and are placed on the little wooden desks. Children who don’t have a toad, either because they couldn’t find one or because they felt disgusted at the idea of grabbing one, move to the table of a classmate, a boy or a girl. Veronica doesn’t have one. Hector notices this and invites her, with a tender gesture, to come to his table. The girl gets up, smiles, and sits down next to the king of the river pool, the enormous toad that looks at them frightened, inflating and deflating the dangling skin of its whitish neck. Teacher Angelica stands up, and speaks.

“Children, today we are going to learn about Bi-o-lo-gy… Biology is the study of life. Bio, life. Logy, study. Biology. The study of life. Today we are going to study life.”

Hector, riveted, listens to her. And he tries to comprehend the words of the teacher, which strike him as great and wise. He’s glad that the subject of the class is something he knows very well: Life. He knows a lot about Life. He’s felt it very close, oh yes! He’s observed it in the river, in the form of tiny silver fish. He’s touched it in the green fur of the submerged stones. He’s sensed it fluttering on the wings of playful dragonflies hovering over the water. He’s seen it frightened in the partridges on the road, which take flight at the sound of his little steps. He’s inhaled its aroma in the soft perfume of the wild flowers. He’s tasted its flavor in the yellow nectar of a ripe mango. He’s admired its colors in the wings of butterflies. And its throbbing in the neck of his toad friend, which inflates and deflates like the accordion of old Chencho during fiesta nights in the village. Life… Isn’t it Life that moistens the grazing field with dew in the mornings, when he crosses it on his bicycle? Isn’t it Life that burns on his skin when the sun warms his games in the river? Isn’t it Life that gets stuck in his throat when Veronica looks at him? That must be it. Yes. That’s what teacher Angelica will talk about. About Life…

“That’s why I asked you all to bring a toad, a young toad. Did everyone bring one?”

Hector’s yes joins in the cascade of yeses that falls on the teacher. But he shouts so loudly that his voice cracks into a falsetto and ends in a long squeak, provoking a hearty laugh from Veronica. Hector turns red with embarrassment!

“So I see, so I see. Well done. That’s very good. Hector, your toad is somewhat big and old. That can make the exercise a little more difficult. Remember I said it should be young?”

Hector blushes again. To be reproached by the teacher in front of the class, especially in front of the girl, embarrasses him. It wasn’t out of forgetfulness. He had compelling reasons to choose that toad instead of a young one. First, that toad isn’t just any toad, it’s the king of the river pool, the biggest and most beautiful toad in the entire world. Second, he knows that toad very well, as well as one knows a friend, and he knows that he won’t let him down: whether in racing or swimming, he’ll be the winner. And third, that’s one hell of a toad2, no two ways about it3! No young toad is going to beat him at anything. It’s well worth enduring the teacher’s scolding. In any event, this way his toad would get to know the school where he goes every day. He’d planned during the previous night, while the toad was swimming in the tractor tire, that after the Science class, he’d take him for a stroll around the whole school, with the twofold purpose of making more people envious, and showing to his toad friend all the secret corners of the school grounds. For example, the storage room where the tools are kept, where the other day he found a tiny gray mouse. Or the wall where he wrote Veronica’s name with a red crayon, inside a heart. Or the…

“What we are going to do today, children, is to dissect an amphibian, in this case a toad, to study its internal parts. Let’s see, Hector. We’ll start with your toad. Since it’s old, it will be very difficult for you to decerebrate it yourself. Let me do it instead.”

Hector, who was mentally wandering with his toad through the corridors of the school, reacts a little late. He hadn’t listened to the teacher.

“I beg your pardon, teacher?” asks Hector, embarrassed.

“I said we are going to dissect your toad first. Let’s see, bring it here…”

“To desiccate it? Teacher, if you dry it up, it will die. I’ve seen them on the stones of the river, dry as a piece of leather.”

“Not to desiccate it, Hector. I said to dis-sect it,” explains the teacher.

The boy, who hadn’t understood the difference, obeys out of inertia. He stands up, picks up his toad—which stares at Veronica for a moment with its olive-green eyes—and walks to the teacher’s desk.

“Now, let’s see…” muses teacher Angelica. “Stay around here, Hector, so you can learn how it’s done. Pay attention, children. The first thing to do is to take this needle right here, and to penetrate with it the toad’s spinal cord.”

The little boy, seeing the huge needle gleaming between the woman’s slender fingers, senses the danger, but holds back out of respect. Maybe it’s not what he thinks. It’s better to wait. Teacher Angelica is good. She won’t harm his toad.

“Everyone better come here. Gather round, children. Form a circle around me. Order, order! Good. The first thing, as I was saying, is to take the needle firmly and place it here, right here, on the toad’s neck, and push it in hard. Then we’ll drive it into the vertebral canal and crack!, we’ll twist it one way and then the other, to break the spine and sever the spinal cord. And then we grab the toad and lay it flat belly up,” says the teacher, taking the toad and turning it over, “to cut it open, with this scalpel, and to study its digestive system, its circulatory system, and its respiratory system… in short, all of its systems. Ah! I brought you some charts…”

The teacher leaves the toad lying on its back, and picks up some long rolls of paper that she’d put on the floor. Hector stares at her, frightened. His huge eyes grow even larger as he examines the chart the teacher tapes to the board, showing a dissected toad, crucified with pins and with its viscera exposed to the air.

“Now we are going to do it ourselves. Look here, the chart is not going anywhere. Pay attention, because later you will have to do this by yourselves, and I am not going to help you. Is that clear? Let’s see… Hector’s toad.”

“Teacher!” cries Hector, with tears in his eyes. “What are you going to do to my toad?”

“What’s the matter, boy? Why are you crying?” she asks, somewhat surprised. “I told you, I’m going to dissect it to study it with you.”

“But no… I… I don’t want to. You said we were going to study Life, not to kill my toad.”

“It’s the same thing. To study amphibians, we have to sacrifice some, so we can see their parts.”

“No… I didn’t bring him here for that… You lied to me!” reproaches the boy, crying, as he snatches the huge toad from the teacher’s hands. “You said it was to study life, not death…”

Hector storms out of the classroom and hurriedly flees on his bicycle. The teacher is left behind, shouting after him.

---

The water flows placidly, without haste, in the river. The foam draws arabesques in its eddies. Dragonflies dance over the grasses. A yellow-breasted bird hops among the branches of a tree. And lying in its shade, Hector admires the playfulness of the little bird. He feels a branch snap, and looks back: Veronica. She greets him and lies down next to him.

“Do you still have the toad?”

Hector shows it to her, captive in his weak hands.

“The teacher is looking for you. She marked you Truant, and says she’s going to call your mom.”

The boy shrugs, and replies:

“I don’t care.” And laughing, he adds: “Tomorrow she won’t even remember.”

“Are you going to keep the toad?”

“No. This is his home. I’m going to release him in the river… where I caught him. Come with me.”

They walk toward the river.

“They killed all the other toads,” says the girl, with a gesture of revulsion. “About twenty of them. Yuck! If you’d seen it… so gross…”

Hector lowers his head and remains silent for a few minutes. The girl puts her index finger on his drooping chin, makes him look up, and kisses him. Then they both burst out laughing. The boy lifts the toad, and wags its foot as if saying goodbye to the girl. She waves goodbye with her hand. The toad, at the first contact with the water, begins flapping its legs desperately, and swiftly swims away. The two children look at it for a long time, until they lose sight of it in the murky depths of the river pool. They continue to stare, in silence, at the green nothingness where it disappeared.

“Do you want me to show you Life, Veronica?” asks Hector.

“Sure! Can you?” she adds, in her sweet voice.

He nods his head. He takes her by the hand and walks with her toward some wild flowers nearby, where a few yellow butterflies flutter restlessly. As restless as the heart of Hector, who carries Life stuck in his throat.