—Back there, the white plastic bag, he says eventually.
With some effort, twisting himself in the seat until his knee is propped up on it, Tomatis leans toward the back of the car, where, alongside Nula’s carefully laid out coat, there are two plastic bags, one blank and another with the large orange W of the hypermarket emblazoned on it. He picks up the first one and holds it up to Nula.
—This one? he says, huffing slightly and checking its contents. There’s two salamis inside.
—No! Nula shouts. Bad dog! And then, lowering his voice, says, The other one.
Without mentioning that, in his clumsiness, the unmarked bag has fallen on his jacket, though luckily without opening completely, Tomatis picks up the other bag and turns around in his seat, and, somewhere between confused and disappointment, asks, A gift from the hyper?
—Nooo! Nula says. Not on your fucking life. I put it in the wrong bag.
Tomatis peers inside.
—I regret to inform you that some goblin has transformed the gold watch you planned to give me into another couple of salamis, he says thoughtfully, with feigned resignation.
—Those are no mere salamis, Nula says, those are two handmade artisanal chorizos manufactured especially for Amigos del Vino, but because the labels came off I can’t sell them. And I can’t keep them either, because that’d mean I was skimming off the top. And because I obviously can’t give them to just anyone, I take the opportunity offered by this encounter, which transpired thanks to a chain of contingencies that in the end turned about favorably, the death of the former publisher, your noble, compassionate reflection before his remains, a series of insufficiently full buses, and my appearance, to carry out the offering. They’re yours.
—Habibi, this is so touching, it gets me right in the trigeminal, Tomatis says, exaggerating his emotion and taking on an overly serious expression and even bringing his hand to his chest and resting his palm on his heart. For a couple of handmade chorizos I’d be liable to send my grandmother off to chart the rings of Saturn.
And he’s silent for a moment. A few seconds later, without really knowing why, he starts talking about Gutiérrez, about his leaving the city, his complete, definitive, and strange disappearance, and about his sudden and inexplicable return. Tomatis tells him that once, in Paris, he and Pichón had met an Italian girl at a party who said she knew Gutiérrez, that he was working as a screenwriter between Switzerland and Italy, but that he wrote the screenplays under a pseudonym. Gutiérrez had first come to the city because his grandmother, who was penniless—his parents had died years before—sent him to parochial school, from some backwater north of Tostado, thanks to the help of the parish priest. After high school he enrolled at the law school, where he met Escalante, Rosemberg, and César Rey, who were younger than him, and had more money, and for years they were inseparable. His Roman Law professor, Calcagno, got him a job at the firm he ran with his partner, Mario Brando, the precisionist poet. Tomatis’s sister knows a woman who knows the couple who works for him—Amalia and Faustino—that they seem to have a high opinion of him and would take a bullet for him. Suddenly, Tomatis stops talking about Gutiérrez, possibly to create, deliberately, a feeling of suspense that leaves Nula with a slight feeling of frustration.
Seeing the approaching corner through the windshield, Tomatis realizes that he’s reaching his house, and returning to commonplace topics, says, The weather’s supposed to be nice tomorrow. I’ll get off at the corner.
The same pat on the shoulder that he gave him when getting in the car is repeated before he opens the door and steps out, with some effort, onto the sidewalk.
—I can’t wait to try them, he says, shaking the hypermarket bag with the two local chorizos. Thanks. I’ll see you.
—On Sunday, first of all, Nula says. Without having understood completely, or possibly without even having heard him, Tomatis closes the door softly and disappears behind the car. When he pulls a few meters from the curb, a blood red light suddenly fills the rearview mirror, surprising Nula, who takes a few seconds to realize that the afternoon sun, after having been invisible for a few days, has reappeared suddenly, in the west. At the end of the street a red blur covers the sky up to a certain altitude, above which, like a gathered canopy, a uniform ceiling of clouds begins, motionless all day and now starting to fold itself up. The grayish vault is stained red, a brilliant red that, as it washes over the houses, the streets, the trees, its magnetic waves and tones in constant and imperceptible transformation, makes it seem uncanny and remote, as though he were seeing it not from a mobile point, crossing it from one end to the other if he wanted, but rather from the source itself, from the very same red incandescence that stains it. Nula feels at once inside and outside the world, and though, like every other day, he’s on his way home to rejoin his wife and children, whose company is in fact pleasant, he’d like to prolong his trip indefinitely and put off the moment he sees them, fearing that what has suddenly separated and isolated him, outside the world, will invade them when they’re finally together.
Nula thinks of Lucía’s gift, its useless, belated ease, not having left them with anything apart from a kind of void, and, possibly, mutual compassion. That mythical pleasure, so long delayed in entering the laborious, wandering train of occurrence, was snuffed out suddenly that afternoon and disappeared forever from the deceitful and brilliant constellation that, without knowing whether it beats inside us or in some remote corner of the external, we call desire. For years, Nula believed that Lucía continued to incarnate the persistence of that myth, made possible because there’s matter, because there’s a world, because in the beginning there was energy, force, and then mass, expansion, proliferation, from all those inconceivable accidents, making ever more intricate combinations, patiently and ceaselessly, sparking, in a constant flux, within the existent, eventually producing that one spark—him, Nula—and placing it one morning at the bar on the corner of Mendoza and San Martín, where the Gran Doria stood for years, along with that student who, just at the moment when he was turning toward the door, called out to ask him a question about a Public Law textbook, delaying him a few seconds, just long enough that, as he walked out into the street, he bumped into the girl in red and without knowing why, started to follow her.
THURSDAY
THE FLOODING
SOLDI SMILES THOUGHTFULLY, IS THAT WHAT HE TOLD YOU? It must be forty years since Tomatis last took a bus, if he ever took one, but every time someone sees him on a corner waiting for a taxi, because he only ever takes taxis, or something else, or nothing, he always makes the same joke, which, if it makes the other person laugh, has given him the same intense pleasure for the last four decades, more or less: I’m waiting for the bus, but I had to let the last few go by because they weren’t full enough.
Gabriela, sitting next to Soldi, in the passenger seat, smiles too, thinking that, because as unlikely as it might seem, when she emerged from her mother’s womb into the world “Carlitos” was already waiting for her, it’s the first time she’s heard the joke. Soldi, his elbow resting on the steering wheel, half-conceals his interlocutor, the wine salesman who, through the open window of his own car, a dark green station wagon, or a long hatchback maybe, has just relayed his encounter with Tomatis, yesterday afternoon, on that corner at the southern end of the city. The two cars are parked facing in opposite directions, very close to each other, on the slope that leads from the asphalt to the sandy road, because they’d passed just as she and Soldi were returning from Gutiérrez’s and he, Nula, was on his way there to drop off a few cases of wine, and so the two drivers had expertly lined their windows up, and after rolling them down and turning off their engines, had started to talk between the cars, Soldi’s pointing up, toward the asphalt, and the other toward the sandy road. To see Nula’s face, Gabriela would have to lean forward in a way that would feel uncomfortable, not only because it would force her body to contort slightly, but also because her attitude could be mistaken for a sign of e
xcessive interest in the conversation that, in what might be considered a falsely casual ironic tone, Soldi and Nula carry on. And when she hears Soldi say that he and Gabriela actually have a date with Tomatis for seven at the Amigos del Vino bar, Gabriela lets her mind wander, gazing at the sky and at the landscape through the windshield and her own window, thinking, with a sort of gentle disdain, that their gossip is not that interesting, and concentrates instead on the luminous afternoon.
Over the past few days the rain has cleaned the air, which is now clear and warm. The sky is a radiant blue, and far above them scattered plumes of bright white clouds drift across they sky, so slowly that they seem motionless, and the sun shines as if those same rains had cleaned it of all its impurities. The first hints of fall have been hushed, and the early afternoon light has a shade of spring. And Gabriela thinks—possibly because what she learned about herself that morning predisposes her to the thought—that April is preparing to offer them, for next few days, a postscript to the summer, before the fall conclusively arrives. Soldi, Nula, and she herself all have on lightweight and light-colored clothes, and the slight heat that can now be felt, in a few hours, and tomorrow at the latest, will no longer require the diminutive. Even just now, when they were having a drink next to the pool before moving to the table in the large, cool, and well-appointed kitchen, she wouldn’t have disliked going in the water. They’d worked with Gabriela since ten, and at noon, when they were preparing to head back to the city (Gabriela was impatient to call Rosario and Caballito with the news), Gutiérrez insisted that they stay for lunch: he had two catfish ready in the fridge, the first of the year apparently, which he’d been given in Rincón, pulled live from the river in front of him, a little more than twenty-four hours before. Gabriela had decided to stay for a few reasons: first, because clearly the invitation had caused Pinocchio (Soldi) intense pleasure; because the chance to eat those mythic fish this close to Rincón itself sounded really appealing to her too, especially because of how hungry she was; and finally, if they stayed for lunch they could work an hour longer, which would help the project move along, because within the history of the provincial avant-garde that she’d been preparing with Soldi thanks to a shared grant they’d gotten in Buenos Aires, precisionism was already taking too much time, too much space, and too much energy, because its history had ended up blending into their own lives.
When they’d stopped to talk between the cars, the catfish had been their first topic of conversation. You ate the catfish, my catfish? Nula had said in a parody of indignant resentment, hyperbolically emphasizing the possessive and telling them that on Tuesday night, after having walked for hours in the rain with Gutiérrez, just when he was about to be compensated by the baked catfish—the same ones they’d just eaten—an unexpected family visit had spoiled his dinner plans (he, Nula, had already offered to contribute a bottle of white wine from the car). Gabriela thought she sensed, despite the farcical tone, a slight tension in Nula’s reaction, though she was unsure what might have caused it, but decided, finally, that it could be the result of a slight embarrassment, possibly caused by the undeniably pretentious competition between him and Soldi for superiority with regard to their friendship with Gutiérrez, the foreigner who enjoys a manifold prestige thanks to his years in Europe, his apparent wealth, and, especially, his enigmatic life. But the tension in Nula disappears almost immediately, as do the fish from the conversation, when he starts describing his encounter with Tomatis.
The moment they are living in is peaceful, if not benevolent. They’re young, all three are under thirty, they’re all healthy, and they’ve all bracketed out the darker things in life, the way an orator holds back a forceful objection that he’ll have to confront later on. Gabriela thinks that Pinocchio and Nula’s jousting is meant to show the other how at home they are in the world. The autonomous, savage hum that occupies their thoughts when they’re alone seems forgotten in favor of the conversation, where their concentration produces an exchange of words that are vivid and sharp and which, while apparently spontaneous, were carefully elaborated before resonating in the external world and fading away immediately, leaving an immaterial and approximate meaning in each other’s memories. With the impartial disposition of someone who, for the moment, can be indifferent, but also cautiously, Gabriela studies them: Soldi’s dark profile, severe despite the smile that appears through his beard, contrasts with his childhood nickname, Pinocchio, which his mother, no doubt thinking he was the most beautiful little doll in the world, or at least the most helpless, had given him in the first days of his life. The shape of his nose and ears don’t match up at all to his namesake’s, and with regard to his moral qualities, Soldi is incapable of lying, meaning his likeness to the puppet must correspond to feelings that Gabriela attributes to his mother, unless, spinning even more finely, she supposes that, in giving him the puppet’s nickname (if in fact she was the one who gave it to him), the mother, recoiling from the pain of childbirth, from her worry, from the fear for the son who would be with her till she died, had been tempted, unconsciously, to deny her maternity, and had given her son the nickname of the motherless marionette: Unless the opposite is the case, and she thinks of herself as the kind and beautiful fairy who, with a wave of her magic wand, had given life to the wooden doll, Gutiérrez says perfectly clearly somewhere inside herself, and her lips form an involuntary smile that causes Nula to look at her, confused, from the other car, and for Soldi, because of Nula’s expression, to turn his head toward her with an inquisitive smile, more apparent in his eyes than on his lips, barely visible beneath the dark black beard, which is tangled and metallic though he keeps it meticulously trimmed.
—It’s nothing, Gabriela says, so they’ll go back to their cheerful, contented exchange, allowing her to keep observing them. Even more cautiously, Gabriela studies the wine salesman now: his expression is friendly and open, possibly too much so. Should she remind him that he isn’t with two potential clients and doesn’t need to lay on the charm so much? With some reluctance, Gabriela tells herself that she might be judging him too harshly, that this might be his natural way of acting, and besides he’s an old friend of Pinocchio’s, who talks about him often. Clearly he likes to dress well, although that could be a result of the work rather than a personal inclination. His hair is light brown and clean cut, and his forearm, resting on the edge of the open window, is covered with a fleece somewhat darker than his hair, which the summer sun must have bleached slightly. And though he must have shaved carefully this morning, his cheeks and chin and neck are already darkened by specks of beard that sprout abundantly on his healthy, coarse, and masculine skin—that capillary abundance, though controlled, from his head to his beard, his forearm, and, Gabriela is sure, on his chest as well, is the product of his being turco, which is to say, of Arabic descent. When they met a few weeks ago at the Amigos del Vino bar (he may not run it, but he does come and go behind the counter, serving himself and his friends, though he knows to never touch the register and notes down everything he drinks), he seemed really angry with Gutiérrez for telling him that he was with his daughter, whom he, Nula, apparently knew before, and very well, but when Pinocchio told him that it may in fact have been true, he calmed down, though for the rest of the time he was with them he remained uneasy and pensive. But when they saw him again a few days later, he’d already seen Gutiérrez again to sell him the wine, and by then seemed to have recovered his composure and his good humor—if in fact the cheerfulness that he displays now is not a professional but rather an authentic quality. A tractor trailer that she hasn’t seen coming because of the direction she’s facing passes full speed toward the city and startles her, not only from the sound of the engine and the roar that the enormous, heavy mass produces as it moves, but also from the vibrations, so violent that the two cars parked on the slope that leads from the asphalt to the sandy road shake too. The red trailer is covered with a dark canvas, its loose edges flapping because of the speed, and as it passes them, Gabri
ela can just make out a suggestion printed in black letters on the rear: VISIT HELVECIA, FOR THE GOLDEN DORADO. All three watch it move away, though Nula, with his back to the road, finds it more difficult, because he has to turn almost all the way around to see it shrink and finally disappear toward the city. Nula checks his watch but doesn’t seem ready to leave yet; after a few seconds of silence that follow the truck’s interruption of their conversation, Nula leans back against his seat, searching for her eyes, and asks:
—What’s new with our local avant-garde?
Gabriela hesitates a few seconds before she responds, because she wasn’t expecting the question and because there’s a hint of irony in it, but finally she explains:
—The testimonies coincide and actually overlap quite a bit, at least at some points. We’ve divided the project into three periods, and have gathered different informants for each of them: the forties, the fifties, and the sixties and seventies. Luckily, there’s a lot on paper.
Nula nods, pressing his lips and widening his eyes to show that he’s giving her his complete attention, at once respectful and reflective. The attitude pleases Gabriela, because it seems to show that Nula is able to behave with some deference and stop himself from acting so arrogantly. Soldi, for his part, also leans back against his seat, making room for the two of them to see each other.
—The main problem is with the head of the movement, Mario Brando. Some people say he was a real artist, others think he was a fraud.
—That’s so often the case, isn’t it, Nula says.
—That’s true, Gabriela says. But there’s some consensus from trustworthy sources toward the latter option.
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