The rain seems more mournful in the empty town than in the countryside or on the river, and though the houses are becoming more and more frequent as they approach the center, and, here and there, though it’s not yet dark, some are lit up inside, these lights do not manage to give an impression of shelter or well-being. In the front gardens the plants drip water, and at the foot of each—hibiscus (which in the area they call juveniles), roses, dahlias, chrysanthemums, and many others—lies a multicolored jumble of fallen petals flattened by the rain. Through one window, an old woman holding a forgotten mate in her hand meets their gazes but does not respond to their subtle greeting. In the side yards and rear courtyards, visible through screen doors or open gates, hanging clothes, propane tanks, blackened furniture, broken dishes, and brightly colored plastic toys, abandoned on the ground, shine with water. Finally they reach the town proper, but the neat cabins with their trim lawns and swimming pools don’t lessen the oppressive feel, and not only from being empty in the middle of the week, because the ones that are lit up, with a new car parked out front or in a garage whose door was left open, and even those where they can see people coming and going through the windows, also secrete tedium, if not affliction. In many houses the flickering lights, caused by the discontinuity of televised images they project, make patterns that filter through the windows, despite the curtains or shutters being closed, and Gutiérrez and Nula, without making any comment, as they advance through the silence that accompanies the splashing of their footsteps, under the multicolored umbrella that, like the yellow rain jacket and the red camper, glows dimly in the blue dusk, both guess, from the fragmentary sounds that reach them every so often—voices and music that retain their shape despite the lack of context and the distance—that in every house they’re watching the same show, some afternoon soap opera no doubt.
Closer to the center of town, the sidewalks are fully formed, some are even made of brick, and on the streets immediately surrounding the square these are ancient structures, high above the street, bulwarks against the floods that, when they’re heavy, Nula explains, can overrun even the highest sidewalks and flood the inner courtyards beyond. An illuminated doorway opens onto the high brick sidewalk and a uniformed guard—the watchman at the entrance to the police station—watches them curiously, slightly intimidated, apparently, possibly because of their expensive clothing, since it goes without saying that the wealthy inspire deference in the keepers of the peace and that they serve at their pleasure. Gutiérrez stops suddenly, and Nula, realizing it only after a few seconds, takes two or three steps beyond the umbrella’s protective canopy and stops in the middle of the sidewalk without turning around. From where he stands, he can hear the sound that the guard’s shoes make as he comes to attention, the exchange of greetings, and the cordial and intricate directions that the guard’s heavily accented voice gives Gutiérrez to Escalante’s house.
—It’s on the other side of the square, Gutiérrez says when he catches up with Nula and they resume their walk under the umbrella.
Nula doesn’t answer, but as soon as they reach the next block, lowering his voice, fractured slightly by some violent emotion, he says:
—A few years ago, there were lots of people who crossed that doorway and never came out again.
—Your father? Gutiérrez asks in a low voice.
—No. He was killed in greater Buenos Aires.
They fall silent again. Now that the dusk has reached the edge of night, more lights are coming on around the square. And because the streetlights are still off, a last luminescence, somewhere between gray, blue, and green, causes porous and dark reflections to shine, here and there, off the wet objects. Inwardly, Nula senses Gutiérrez’s confusion, but out of cruelty pretends not to notice it in order to prolong his discomfort, telling himself, almost reflexively, but immediately feeling guilty for thinking it, that Gutiérrez must have had it good in Europe while so many were tortured to death, defenseless and blind, in the town they’re walking through under the rain. Nula realizes that his cruelty doesn’t come from any sense of moral superiority, but rather from the brutal suspicions that have been plaguing him since the moment when Lucía, in that green swimsuit, had stepped from the pool dripping wet, and, without looking at him once had sat down in the yellow canvas lawn chair. He’s only just now realized that if she hadn’t even glanced at him as she came emerged from the water it was because Gutiérrez had already told her he was coming. Soldi can think whatever he wants, he says to himself, but I’ve known who Lucía’s parents were for years. The momentary attack of rage passes immediately when he hears Gutiérrez’s slightly contrite voice.
—Now I get why you kept walking and didn’t turn around.
Nula is about to say something about the terrible years they lived through—he was just coming out of adolescence—but his reluctance makes him adopt a gentle and benevolent tone.
—No, no, he says. I didn’t realize that you’d stopped, and then I was looking at the square.
But he knows that, though he pretends to accept the explanation, Gutiérrez doesn’t believe it. They cross the street, and when their feet touch the corner of the square, aimed at a diagonal, the streetlights come on suddenly. A kind of iridescent halo, like a floating vapor, forms around the globes of white light distributed around the square. And the rain, as it crosses the illuminated space, becomes visible and audible as it cascades over the branches and trunks of the giant rosewoods and the floss silk trees, pouring over the cobbled paths and dripping over an infinite number of points, not only in the square, but in the town, in the region, in the province, in the world. They leave the square and enter a dark street behind a white church. Gutiérrez stops and looks around, trying to get oriented.
—He said it was behind a church, a block and a half away, he says doubtfully.
—It must be there, Nula says. After his vindictive overtures just now, he demonstrates an exaggerated desire to cooperate in the search for this Escalante. But, while exaggerated, this desire is actually sincere; despite the rescheduled appointments, the interminable walk under the rain, the mud, and the damp, not for one moment has he regretted following Gutiérrez on the expedition.
They pass the church and start to cross the street. Despite the streetlight, which hangs in the middle of the block from intersecting cables that support the lamp and the shade that protects it, Nula, who is studying the houses on the next block for some possible sign of what they’re looking for, steps into a deep hole in the sandy street, the only one full of water, where, with a hard splash, his left foot submerges to the ankle, causing him to pull it out so violently that the brown loafer, lodged in the hole, comes off and stays where he stepped.
—You fucking bitch! Nula screams, speaking to the universe in general, to the infinitely complex and therefore impenetrable order of things that, indifferent to his designs and desires, put the puddle in the street, at the same instant and in the exact spot where his loafer came down. He rolls forward, standing only on his right foot, turns, and jumping on one leg, returns for the shoe, but Gutiérrez, already recovered from the sudden agitation the incident caused—agitation manifested especially in the umbrella, which trembled, whirling down and up again, producing a brief, colored tornado that, in the dusky half light, took on a muted splendor—has already bent over and is pulling the shoe from the hole, and, straightening up, he holds it out to Nula as he simultaneously offers a precise and sober analysis.
—When your foot went in, he says, the water in the puddle splashed into the street, and because the hole is so narrow, the shoe stayed on top, with the heel on the edge; don’t worry, no water went in.
—Look at my sock and pant leg, Nula says reproachfully.
And Gutiérrez, who did not let Nula’s somewhat cruel silence when they walked away from the police station go unnoticed, and just as he’s feeling guilty for having talked to the guard, thinks, despite his impassive demeanor, that actually Nula’s current situation isn’t altogether undeserve
d. Nula shakes out the shoe and slips it on, stomping his heel two or three times—in a possibly overly ostentatious way that his shadow appears to mimic—against the sandy street tamped down by the rain. They reach the sidewalk in silence, and Gutiérrez is starting to get irritated by Nula’s persistent moodiness, when Nula, who seems to have realized something analogous to this, relents.
—What just happened constitutes the broadest cause for laughter, he says. And you didn’t laugh. Thank you for that.
—At my age, you learn to control your emotions, Gutiérrez says, laughing gently to signal that he considers Nula a good sport and that his self-control allows him to concede a certain level of irony toward the misfortunes of others.
—Right now I could be in some warm office in the capitol, selling wine to some aide to the governor, Nula says, exaggerating his plaintive tone. And then, laughing as well, adds, But I don’t regret a thing. This outing takes me out of my routine.
—If Ulysses had made it straight home, the Odyssey wouldn’t exist, Gutiérrez says.
—Possibly, Nula says. But these days the epic form is an anachronism.
—As a professional screenwriter, that notion takes the bread from my table.
—Not just the bread, Nula says. The wine and local salami, too. Which, by the transitive property, takes it from mine.
They laugh. Their recent troubles seem overcome. Now, farther from the corner, the sidewalk is darker, and their shadows disappear into the darkness. The houses are neither rich nor poor. Some are very old, and abut the brick sidewalk directly; others have a small front garden, separated from the earthen path by a chain-link fence. A woman carrying a plastic bag emblazoned with the W of the hypermarket and loaded with provisions, is about to enter one of the houses, stooping to slide the bolt to the screen door. Nula calls out. The woman looks around nervously.
—Good evening, Nula says. Excuse us. We’re looking for the Escalante family.
—You mean Doctor Escalante? she says.
Nula hesitates.
—Yes, that’s right, Gutiérrez says. He’s a lawyer.
—He’s retired, the woman says. That’s them next door.
The woman points to the next house over. There’s a flower bed out front, behind a fence; an expanse of neat lawn around the side courtyard, with an enormous orange tree at the center; and, at the back, a garden, judging by the cane and wire plant trellises, visible thanks to the light that shines through the windows on the far side of the ivy-covered house. Delicia! Delicia! the woman shouts. After a minute or so the door opens and a feminine silhouette, apparently very young, is cut from the rectangle of light.
—What is it? she shouts.
—Delicia, it’s me, Celia. There’s two men here looking for an attorney.
The silhouette in the doorway hesitates a few seconds.
—Who are you? she finally shouts.
Gutiérrez steps up to the fence and shouts back, I’m a friend from abroad, coming by to say hello.
Suddenly, and inexplicably, the silhouette in the doorway starts to laugh.
—I know who you are, she says. Sergio’s at the club. Sorry not to come out but I’m washing my hair. Good to meet you. Celia, honey, can you show them where the club is?
—Look, says the first woman. Go past the church and turn right. It’s three blocks, on the river side. The sign says El Amarillo.
—Thank you, Nula and Gutiérrez say in unison, acting much more polite than if they were speaking to a man, somewhere more crowded, and in the middle of the day. They turn back the way they came, then right on the second corner, pass the church, and walk a block parallel to the square. After crossing the street again—Nula sees the same iridescent vapor haloed over the light at the intersection that covered the white globes in the square—they enter another street, darkened by the trees that border the sidewalk, but also by the night that has now fallen completely. To the west, behind them, Nula imagines, the curtain of darkness must have already lowered completely, erasing the last fringe of blue light that hung on the edge of the horizon. They don’t speak now, and despite the constant rubbing of their shoulders, forced together by the meagerness of the shelter and the irregularity of the sidewalks, their steps splash with the same rhythm. And though both, for different or possibly even opposite reasons, are impatient to arrive, each seems to have forgotten the other. In fact, they’re only strangers, and despite the ease with which they exchange the words that the other finds suitable, precise, smart, and so on, both are unsettled by what they might come to learn when the respective opacities that mutually attract them are finally illuminated. It’s possible this discomfort is caused, as often happens, by not fully comprehending that the curious attraction they feel comes from unwittingly associating the other with something they both want to reclaim, and which they’ve long kept hidden in some remote corner inside themselves. They cross the street again, onto another dark sidewalk. Halfway down the block, a wide strip of light, which divides the darkness in half, suggests that they’ve reached the place they sought. And, in fact, a tin sign hangs from a bar that extends over the sidewalk from the brick wall:
EL AMARILLO
FISH AND GAME CLUB
A rough, childish drawing of an elongated fish, painted the same bright yellow as Gutiérrez’s jacket, decorates the metal rectangle under the name.
—We’re here, Gutiérrez says, and, apparently forgetting Nula, who is left outside the umbrella’s protective cylinder, takes a few steps toward the open door and inspects the interior. Nula walks up and does the exact same thing, with very similar movements, not realizing that, because Gutiérrez has his back to him and can’t see that Nula’s movements so closely resemble his own, someone watching them from behind would think that Nula is deliberately aping him. Suddenly, Gutiérrez closes the umbrella, turns around, and shakes it over the sidewalk to release some of the water. Through the space he opens as he backs up, Nula can see inside the club. It looks like a newly built storehouse, made of unplastered brick, and while the thatch roof is in perfect shape (having been built pretty recently), the floor, by contrast, is simply tamped-down earth. Two small lamps hang from one of the roof beams, and a few lamps are attached to the walls, but only two or three are lit up. Three small tables and their respective folding chairs, arranged somewhat at random, a bit lost in a space that could contain many more, are scattered around the room. Two long planks, some collapsed trestles, and a stack of folding chairs is piled up against a wall. At the back there’s a counter and a set of shelves loaded with glasses and bottles, and next to that a yellowed household fridge with a larger door below a smaller one to the freezer, which, Nula thinks, some member of the club probably donated after buying a new one. When they appear in the doorway, a man with a full, smooth beard, standing between the counter and the shelves, stops in the middle of drying a glass, watching them with an inquisitive and somewhat severe expression. At the only occupied table, four men are playing cards and three others are standing behind them, following the course of the game. None of them appears to have noticed their presence yet.
The severe look of the barman at the unexpectedness of their sudden intrusion doesn’t seem to intimidate Gutiérrez, who, Nula thinks somewhat anxiously, walks in with the same ease and self-assurance with which one of its founding members or even its president could have. Nula, following him submissively, wavers between disapproval and confused admiration, and is so surprised by Gutiérrez’s determination that he’s not even conscious of what he’s thinking, which, translated into words, would be more or less the following: Or maybe this is all so familiar to him, it’s such an intimate part of himself that despite the thirty-some years away the words and gestures come on their own, reflexively or instinctually, or rather—and it would be offensive if this were the case—he thinks that the millions that Moro attributes to him give him the right to walk in this club as though he were actually its president.
Without even glancing at the barman, Gutiérrez, scrut
inizing each of the players at the table and the three men following the game behind them, walks slowly toward the table. He stops suddenly, staring at one of the four players, who is receiving, his eyes down, the cards that the player to his left is dealing. The man’s hair, a slicked-back shell pasted to his skull, is thick and smooth; it’s patched in white, gray, and black, like the hair of an animal. A cartoonist would represent it by alternating curved black lines with corresponding white gaps of varying width between them, and a few black, white, and gray blotches interrupting the lines to mark the spots where the black and white separate. Two hollows amplify the forehead that, along with his nose, comprises the most protrusive part of his face, which narrows into a triangle toward his chin. His skin is a dark and lustrous brown, its similarity to leather accentuated by the wrinkles on his neck, on his hands, and around his eyes, whose half-shut eyelids obstruct the view to his eyes themselves, which closely study the two cards he’s been dealt as he prepares to pick up a third, just thrown across the greasy table, itself a brown only slightly darker than his hands.
—Sergio, Gutiérrez says.
—Willi, says the other man, his tone neutral, not even looking up from his cards.
La Grande Page 4