"Christmas in Ushuaia" by Matias Travieso-Diaz

Laz throws his negative life experiences to the wind. Did he do the right thing?

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Christmas in Ushuaia by Matias Travieso-Diaz

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All people have had ill luck, but Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus had the worst.

—Mark Twain

Laz pulled the parka closer to his body, ineffectually trying to ward off the gelid wind that blew from the mountains. Argentina was supposed to be warm in late December, but in Ushuaia, at the end of the world, the temperature rarely rose above fifty degrees. “Today, not even fifty,” Laz mumbled. Talking to himself was just one of the habits that over the years had attached to him like fleas on a dog’s fur.

He had not come to this remote outpost to see the sights -- Ushuaia held little of interest to entice a seasoned traveler like himself; it was described in the tourist guides as merely “a sliver of steep streets and jumbled buildings below the snowcapped Martial Range” of the Andes. He was also not interested in a trip to Antarctica, or in hiking the steep trails of Andorra Valley or trekking to the Martial Glacier, a couple of hours from town. “I’m not athletic,” he told himself; not that his arthritic knees would have allowed him to go ambling about as he used to in his youth.

He had signed up for a four-hour boat cruise on the Beagle Channel that would take him to his goal, the area around the Les Eclaireurs lighthouse. Sailing along the channel off Ushuaia, the boat had passed by sea lions basking on the rocks, cormorants sitting on nests, fur seals, and other wildlife he did not recognize. On Martillo Island, the boat had come close to what the guide described as one of the largest penguin colonies outside of Antarctica. Laz had taken numerous pictures, although he had no expectation he would ever show them to anyone.

The boat finally arrived at Les Eclaireurs lighthouse, an iconic symbol of Ushuaia that the locals called the “lighthouse at the end of the world.” Its distinctive red and white stripes contrasted sharply with the backdrop of snow-capped mountains north of the channel. Laz would have liked to disembark, but this was not permitted.

The end point of the boat tour was small Bridges Island. Passengers got off and set out on a walk, in search of native flora and fauna. At one point along the trek, Laz paused to gaze at the sprawling view across the Beagle Channel, with Ushuaia in the distance and the lighthouse not far to the northeast. 

An albatross, gliding on enormous wings, circled around Laz. It spiraled down and landed a few yards away, righted itself and began pecking at the ground with its longish hooked bill in search of morsels cast away by the sea. It paused for one moment, raised its head, and stared at Laz as if offering encouragement. 

Laz extracted from his coat a small notebook with dirty, worn covers and opened it.

Each page of the notebook bore line after line of minuscule, crabbed handwriting. Some of the entries had become blurred by contact with liquids; others were obliterated by thick horizontal lines. Some entries were in pencil, others in inks of various colors. There were gaps in some pages, as if the writer had given up on his task only to resume it sometime later.

Laz read aloud one of the entries on the first page, which stood out because it was a little larger than the others and seemed to be inscribed with greater force. He read: “they all laughed at seeing my legs encased in plaster casts. I said that I had to wear the casts for eight weeks to straighten my crooked leg bones, and they laughed even more.” The rest of the entry had been blacked out.

Laz tore the page and flung it away, and the strong breeze carried it towards the icy realms to the south. At the sound of ripping paper, the albatross jumped a little, but planted again its long, webbed feet on the rocky soil and resumed its dinner.

Laz started to read aloud again from his diary, but had to stop almost at once: the fierce wind choked him and paralyzed his throat. He continued tearing page after page from the notebook, sometimes stopping to read to himself a few lines, tears forming in the corners of his eyes at some remembered event. The wind carried away briskly each of the pages; the albatross paid no attention to the ceremony after the disturbance caused by the first sheet.

A voice near Laz’s ears broke his concentration: “What are you doing?” It was the guide, bringing the rest of the passengers back to the boat. “Littering is a criminal offense in Tierra del Fuego. Stop it or I will have to report you.”