—Are you sure you’re going to work? he says.
Without needing him to continue, Diana takes the suggestive question as a positive assessment relative to her appearance, and she smiles, condescending, enigmatic.
—On judgment day all will be revealed, she says. Here’s your cell phone and your friend’s number in Bahía Blanca. And, seeing his somewhat helpless nakedness, his face darkened by sweat and by the heat that has reddened sections of his skin, plus the horizontal wrinkles formed on his belly by the position of his half-upright body, plus his penis and testicles, submerged in a layer of soft, amorphous skin below his curly pubic hair, plus his sweat-dampened thighs and his bony knees, which appear older than the rest of his body, plus his curled toes and the wrinkled and dirty soles of his feet, Diana says, You look like you’re all set to receive them.
Diana leaves the paper on the chair, and though there isn’t a hint of breeze she puts the cell phone on top of it to keep it from flying off. Nula watches all of her movements with deliberate, excessive attention. Without looking at him, she knows what he’s doing, and when she straightens up she hides her smile. She’s happy, Nula thinks. Maybe because of the secrets I’ve just told her, or maybe the idea of meeting them on Sunday makes her think she might learn something new about me even though they’re not important any more. Diana, without saying a word or dropping her mysterious air, waves goodbye silently, her palm turned toward him, with her fingers. Though he doesn’t lie back down, Nula, with a distracted movement, covers his genitals again and watches her walk away: her flowered skirt, undulating at her knees, her straight back, now, because of the cut of the linen jacket, forming a white rectangle from her shoulders to her hips that hides the true geometry of her body, the inverted trapezoid of her torso, her semispherical, pointed breasts, the dark triangle of her pubis, the curvy, pronounced bulge of her circular hips, which safely transported to the world the two little animals who right now must be taking a nap at the day care, as opposed to her, who, because her umbilical cord had been wrapped around her wrist, is now forced to hide her stump in the angled pocket of her jacket and to hang her leather purse from her forearm. An unexpected emotion seizes him, a mixture of affection and guilt, of distress and happiness for his luck that lasts a few seconds and then passes, after which he lies back down face up, closes his eyes, and tries to erase the last traces of that unbearable emotion, which has extracted him suddenly from his neutral state, neither painful nor pleasurable, in which the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, and the years slide by. Eventually, he calms down, and the sweat that touches his lips every so often tastes something like tears. Sitting on the mat, he picks up the cell phone and the white paper and dials Riera’s number. The phone rings once and Riera answers.
—I was about to leave for the office, he says in a soft, affable, and vaguely paternalistic voice. I didn’t think you were going to call.
—Did she already tell you about our meeting? Nula says. Despite the separation, she’s still under your influence.
—First of all, we’re not separated, we’re estranged, Riera says, without losing an ounce of affability despite the severity of Nula’s tone. Secondly, I’ve been planning this trip, to see the baby, for a long time. It’s Holy Week, remember? And finally, it’s such a pleasure to hear from you after so long, and how enchanting your wife is! Why’d you disappear without saying a word, you son of a bitch?
—I didn’t want to bother you. You two seemed so busy, he says, repressing a smile.
—Now I have to ask your permission to fuck my wife? Riera says obscenely. Despite the time that’s passed, Nula recognizes the overtones.
—There are more important things that you don’t . . . Nula starts to say, but Riera, cheerfully, deliberately compounding the vulgarity of his previous question, interrupts him:
—Horseshit! he says, raising his voice slightly. I’ve told you a thousand times: what there is is what is there and what it does, no more no less.
—And I’ve told you a thousand times: vulgar empiricism, or worse yet, bourgeois pragmatism, Nula says, laughing. You’re in decline, Oscar.
What there is is what is there, no more no less: that aphorism contained the entirety of Riera’s materialist monism (though he’d never called it that), and Nula had heard him say it over and over back then, as a way to start or finish any discussion, never losing his grave voice or his cheerfulness. A kind of euphoria seems to overcome him when he expresses that conviction, as if everything, reduced to the primitive, unsophisticated tendency of primary material to diversify through countless combinations revealed its essential transparency, its immediate and distant clarity, its mechanical predictability, facilitating not only his way of being on the physical plane, but also, and especially, on the moral one. (Riera’s worldview, at least as or possibly more crude than the world to which he applies it, is, to Nula, his most enviable trait.)
—You can criticize me in person. I’ll be in the city tomorrow at noon, Riera says.
—At noon? Nula says, incredulous.
—I take off from Bahía Blanca at eight thirty, connect in Aeroparque at eleven, and at twelve, more or less, I land in Sauce Viejo, Riera says.
—Should I pick you up? Nula says.
—Lucía will be waiting for me, Riera says. And we’ll see each other Sunday, in any case—your wife is coming I hope—and I stay the rest of the week. I have to run to the office. Ciao.
When the line goes dead, Nula hangs up the cell phone and holds it cupped in his hand, which shakes distractedly, confused by the conversation he’s just had and whose echoes, empirical traces that resonate, more and more uncertain, until they crystallize, or fossilize, like flowers of experience desiccated between the yellowed pages of a book, move to their place in the dark archive of his memory. Nula leaves the phone on the chair and, throwing the towel carelessly on the grass, he stands up, naked, and takes a few indecisive steps across the lawn. The courtyard is a rectangle of green grass, closed at the back and along the sides by an unplastered brick wall tall enough to prevent the neighbors from seeing him walk around naked; a curved, white slab path dives the rectangle of grass in two; on the path an overturned tricycle bakes in the sun; and on the lawn a small plastic truck full of dried avocado leaves seems to wait for someone to push it away; a few trees grow along the wall, a bitterwood, a very tall avocado tree, and a rose laurel. Suddenly, a butterfly appears a meter away, as if, filtering through an invisible fissure in the air, it had fluttered from nothingness into being, from the impossible other world that Riera consigns to inexistence without the slightest hesitation, to the living interior of the material, taking shape, dense and rough; it flutters a while in the daylight, and then, disintegrating, returns, darkly, to the indifference and muddiness of the diurnal.
After shaving for the second time that day, Nula’s mind, clouded by the sun, awakens under a warm shower, where he remains a long time, and before stepping out he finishes with a thick burst of cold water; his muscles tense up, and as he dries himself, he feels energetic, compact, hard, and he rubs his body vigorously, opening the bathroom door and causing the steam from the warm shower, which fogs the mirror, to dissipate. It’s somewhat cooler outside the bathroom, so he walks to the bedroom, naked, to dress, constantly rubbing his body with the towel to dry the wetness, which he can no longer distinguish as water or sweat. In the bedroom, which, in darkness, is actually cold, he senses, with pleasure, that his skin is drying, and after rubbing deodorant on his armpits he starts to get dressed with the kind of special attention that has nothing to do with the inauguration of the promotion for Amigos del Vino but rather with the expectation of another kind that the night has in store for him. He puts on a lightweight tan suit over a cream-colored short-sleeve polo shirt, without a tie, and a pair of shiny brown loafers, without socks. The local criteria for elegance, more or less valid for the previous forty years, and suited to a middle class man whose work does not preclude him from certain touches
of bohemia, which includes the selective commerce of wine and other gastronomical products, are followed scrupulously by Nula, but his age, twenty-nine, the last symbolic barrier from entering the adult world forever, allows him certain touches of studied negligence, exhibited to the world in general, but especially for certain people, at night, and in secret. When he’s ready he picks up his keys, his pen, his wallet and credit cards, a few coins from the night stand, his cell phone, his notebook, and a clean handkerchief that he puts in the right rear pocket of his pants, and turning toward his desk he switches the computer on, looking for the lines by Omar Kayyám that, last night, after he and Diana got back from the Amigos del Vino bar, where they were having drinks with Gabriela Barco, Tomatis, Soldi, and Violeta, and, around midnight, after taking home the girl who’d stayed late to watch the kids, he’d finished polishing and typing out on the computer, expurgated of all allusions contrary to the aseptic postulates of publicity technique, of marketing strategy, and of the porous and drowsy understanding of the consumers. If the ideas on this topic, which he’s been turning over in his head for a long time, could be expressed in a more or less organized way, they would develop as follows: Inebriation, the primary function of wine consumption, cannot be mentioned, though by definition it’s the very reason for its existence; and inebriation begins with the first glass, which means that only a hypocrite could pretend that drinking in moderation is possible. The feeling produced by the first sip of wine and the ultimate drunken black-out are only separated by degrees. After the first glass, the other, an other—the otherness—that we’re seeking begins to bloom from within the only place where it could rationally be found, that is to say, within ourselves. Wine transforms both the drinker and the world around him. The sensorial shift provokes a momentary forgetting of the abyss, allowing, almost immediately, joy, wit, and energy to take its place; it doesn’t matter that later, with the second or third bottle, distress, anguish, confusion, and fury return, taking possession of the body and the mind. Inebriation is an easy gift: the ability to finally be oneself. Sobriety expels us from our true inner life, and inebriation restores it to us. That is the only purpose of wine, and because of this alcohol is sacred in every civilization but ours, where, like everything else, it’s been transformed into merchandise. It must have something to do with Christianity, because in The Thousand and One Nights the wine sellers are always Christian. Rather than attempt to excise inebriation from the consumption of wine, it’s necessary to admit that in fact inebriation without wine also exists, and that seeking it through wine constitutes a search for the self, which sobriety, in general, refuses. It stands to reason that in order not to find one’s self it’s necessary to practice a ritualized sobriety. Natural inebriation, without the aid of toxins like wine or other drugs is also looked down upon. Insanity, for instance, can be considered a kind of inebriation caused by a combination of internal and external agents. Mysticism is another: that’s why the mystics, drunk on divinity, are shunned by every religion. But there’s a passing, non-toxic inebriation that can suddenly assault the individual, allowing an internal transformation and, for a few moments, an inward sight along with a different vision of the world that is estranged, in transition, where the banal is exalted, the familiar is uncanny, and the unknown, familiar. That autonomous inebriation, which can cause exaltation or panic, puts one into contact with the otherness sought through wine, and is therefore as suspect as the other, which wine produces. The earnest search for that otherness from the self, which is within the self, and within the world, can be considered an exercise in practical metaphysics. And the contact with that otherness, exultant or painful, like a passing mystical experience, shouldn’t be worried over. Nula takes the notebook from his pocket, opens it on the desk, and, with a black pen removed from a jar, after drawing a line, a squiggle, and then another line in order to separate the new note from the previous one, thinks for a few seconds and then writes: A dialectical materialism conceived from multiple and contradictory viewpoints, in a single individual or in several: the otherness of the self, like the front and back of a thin disc, which, when spun, reverses front and back, each occupying the place of the other. One transforming, continuously, into the other. But as he writes he’s assaulted by a doubt: what if his fear of having been betrayed by Lucía is what’s inspired his revenge on the ridiculous conspiracy that adjudicates Riera and Lucía. He leaves the pen in the jar, closes the notebook, puts it in the inside pocket of his coat, and, after picking up the briefcase, passing through the bedroom to take one last look at himself in the mirror, he turns off the light and, crossing the living room and the cool, shaded front hall, opens the door and goes out onto the bright sidewalk.
Over the past two days the city has returned to a summer that, judging by the increasing heat, would naturally be called intense and, for the same reason, temporary. The rain earlier that week, on top of the humidity it brought with it, had given renewed life to the vegetation: first the water had cleansed the foliage, and then, penetrating the earth over two consecutive and almost full days and nights, had helped the sap to feed the branches, rising and extending to each leafy tip, to every tiny filament at the farthest ends from the trunk, and as a result of this secret, periodic trajectory between the earth and the water, the light and the air, appeared, in passing, traces of reddish or tender green buds, little flowers opened temporarily, and branches loaded, once again, with new, firm, and very green leaves. Even the people on the street have let themselves be conquered by this extension of the summer, and the deserted streets reveal that the sense to not be seen on the street until at least after six, when the sun begins to fall, is now intrinsic to the city’s inhabitants, always alert, though the summer may have passed, to the menace of the heat. Everyone who’s braved the outdoors, at least in the streets far from the city center, now walks on the western sidewalk, in the shade, and if they’re forced to cross they do so at the very last moment, risking as little time in the sun as possible. As he pulls out, the air conditioning starts to hum, and Nula advances slowly down the empty street, staying close to the curb, unsure yet which route he’ll choose to the hypermarket: because the space that separates him from it could roughly coincide with the surface of a right triangle, the two most direct options from his house are to travel the catheti, which is to say, drive straight to the boulevard, turn east, and drive the full length of the boulevard to the bridge and then continue along the straight highway that in a certain sense extends the boulevard all the way to the supercenter and beyond, to La Guardia and the Paraná fork, or he could choose the hypotenuse, which is to say the port road, and because it’s still before five he decides to drive through the center, and so, somewhat randomly, following the impulse of the moment, he turns at this or that street, always to the north or to the east, driving into the downtown that, in fact, for a sunny April day, around four thirty, is practically deserted. Because the fall business schedules are already in effect, most businesses are still open, though for the most part they’re empty, and very few people get off of the buses that come from the outskirts, advancing almost at a crawl, one behind the other, down particular streets. Nula knows that it’s not only the heat that drives the people from the downtown, but also the supercenter, which, though deserted during the first part of the week, is transformed, over the weekend, into the principal attraction in the region.
When he turns onto the avenue he accelerates slightly, passes a couple of trucks—the second one, painted red, has the words VISIT HELVECIA, FOR THE GOLDEN DORADO printed in large, black letters on the trailer—and moves ahead, alone, toward the bridge. Coming out of the bridge onto the highway, he looks, through the gap left by the suspension bridge after it fell during one of the last major floods, at the large circle of water known as the lagoon, which he was contemplating that morning from the empty bar in Guadalupe, and though, for the moment, the full length of the surface, seen from a distance, appears to be made of a luminous, fractured substance, the quality of the li
ght has changed since this morning. Closer, on the opposite shore from the waterfront, at the Piedras Blancas beach, which had been deserted the past few weeks, he sees several bathers splashing in the water and others, stretched out on the sand, tanning in the sun. The short, dark green station wagon, bought second-hand a couple of years ago with the money he earned from selling wine, leaves behind the road bridge and, accelerating, starts down the four-lane asphalt road that everyone simply calls the highway, and which narrows over the next three or four kilometers until it splits to the right toward Paraná, and to the east, along the coastal road. But the hypermarket is right there, barely a kilometer from the bridge, on the right hand side of the road.
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