Chemari Pushes Iñaki into the Swimming Pool

Chemari Goñi’s push into the pool at Club Loreto turns a schoolboy prank into a reversal of power: the five-year-old Iñaqui, initially helpless in the water with his skates on, uses his swimming ability to pay Chemari back. The encounter begins with an older boy leading a younger one away from school, but ends with both boys wet and Iñaqui unexpectedly in control.

The boys and the day away from school

Iñaqui was five and Chemari had already turned seven. They attended different classes, and their clothes marked their ages: Iñaqui wore short trousers, while Chemari had graduated to knickerbockers. Both wore berets and raincoats and carried their school folders on their backs by straps. The ordinary equipment of school thus accompanies their first departure from its routine.

Chemari had the reputation of the sort of child bourgeois parents called bad company. Such boys used profane language, broke streetlights with stones, and often skipped class, sometimes drawing classmates along with them. That morning, Chemari invited Iñaqui to miss school and spend the time skating at Club Loreto, which had an outdoor skating rink and an indoor swimming pool. For Iñaqui, the invitation was a first: he had never skipped school or skated. The account calls this accidental meeting fateful for both boys, setting their unequal skills and the pool at the center of the episode.

From the rink to the water

The boys’ talents were sharply divided. Iñaqui was an excellent swimmer but had never skated; Chemari was a formidable skater whose swimming resembled a wildly turning mill. When Iñaqui admitted that he had never seen an indoor pool, Chemari encouraged him to go and look. He helped Iñaqui up and took him by the hand so that he would not fall again, leading him to the edge of the green-and-blue rectangle.

The gesture of assistance gives way to the shove. Chemari teases Iñaqui for being presumptuous and pushes him into the pool. The fall is sudden and awkward: Iñaqui feels faint, lands in the water, and instinctively tries to remove his skates. Unable to do so, he struggles beneath the surface and takes off his shoes instead. The shoes and their attached steel fittings sink to the bottom; freed of that footwear, he manages to reach the surface. The danger in the prank comes not simply from falling in, but from entering the water still wearing the skates he has only just learned to use.

Iñaqui turns the prank around

Chemari laughs at the trouble he has caused. Iñaqui, meanwhile, decides to take revenge. On land, Chemari is taller and stronger, so Iñaqui recognizes that the balance changes in the water. He conceals his anger by laughing too, then demonstrates that he is a capable swimmer while considering how to get Chemari into the pool.

Iñaqui approaches the edge where Chemari is standing and raises a hand as if asking for help to climb out. Chemari reaches down to assist him. Iñaqui pulls hard on the offered hand, bringing Chemari into the water, and holds him under long enough to give him a dunk that will not be easily forgotten. When he judges Chemari sufficiently punished, Iñaqui swims the full length of the pool, making his ability plain to the boy who had mocked him.

Consequences and significance

The ending returns the scene to the practical consequences of the first shove. Iñaqui has lost his shoes, and all his clothes are wet; he anticipates being scolded when he gets home. His retaliation has changed the immediate balance between the boys, but it cannot undo the trouble of arriving home soaked and barefoot.

The pool also extends beyond this first encounter. The narrative identifies it as the setting for many of Iñaqui’s later successes, making the boy’s early helplessness in the water a pointed contrast with the skill he displays once he reaches the surface. In miniature, the episode moves from invitation to humiliation, from concealed anger to calculated reprisal, and from a boy’s first fall into the pool to a demonstration of the ability that Chemari’s prank had failed to account for.