La Grande (8 page)

—Do you know where it is? Gutiérrez says.

—Doctor Russo's place? Escalante says. I once brought charges on behalf of two or three poor bastards who lost everything they had because of him.

—See you Sunday, Gutiérrez says.

They tap each other on the arm and Escalante nods at Nula, a kind of economical greeting that is also a gesture of approval, as though, despite having exchanged only two or three conventional words with him, he were granting him something resembling a certificate of approval. Chacho comes around the bar, and his corpulence, while surprisingly greater than it seemed at first, contrasts with the energy and even agility with which he moves. Gutiérrez and Nula follow him, but Gutiérrez takes a couple of hesitant steps and then stops, turning back toward Escalante.

—I'll have you know, he says, that when a European pauses thoughtfully, pencil in hand, it's because he's doing a crossword puzzle.

—I imagined as much, Escalante says, without stopping, and practically without looking at him, as he turns back toward the table of card players, and Nula thinks, again, but with a shade of irony this time,
What strange people
.

They step out into the rainy night, and, under the entrance sign, Gutiérrez once again unfolds the multicolored umbrella, but Chacho is moving so quickly that he has to stop and wait, realizing that the others have been delayed by a couple of seconds. As soon as they leave the swath of light that projects over the sidewalk, Chacho turns on the flashlight and an intense white beam shines over the sandy ground, the uneven brick sidewalks, and the
saturated weeds that border the street. On the next corner, as they cross the illuminated intersection, Chacho turns off the flashlight, but after only a few meters he turns it on again. They pass the last of the street lights, and the tall silhouettes of darkened trees ahead appear to block their path, but it wouldn't make sense to say that the trees interrupt the road: just like when they came into town from the north, the sidewalks and the street are now level, separated only by a ragged strip of weeds that reflects fragments of the white flashlight beam, and, strictly speaking, it's already hard to tell them apart and there doesn't seem to be either a street or a sidewalk anymore. In reality they now walk down what, had there been one, could have been considered the middle of the street. Seeing Chacho covered in the sack, Nula feels a bit ridiculous under the small, multicolored umbrella, his left arm constantly rubbing against Gutiérrez's right elbow, elevated because he's holding the umbrella in his right hand, making their walk so difficult that Chacho, just ahead of them, has to stop every so often to wait, but the rain, fine and silent, is too heavy to face unprotected. When they reach the trees that darken the path, Chacho leads them to the right, onto an embankment that is somewhat more slippery and wet than the rain-tamped, sandy street.

—This is clay through here, Chacho warns them, and slows down a bit. Nula and Gutiérrez move cautiously, feeling the wet mud against the soles of their shoes, squeaking under Gutiérrez's now hesitant boots. The flashlight beam, projecting over the earth, reveals a brilliant, glistening circle of reddish mud. After walking some fifty meters over the embankment, noisily and with a few slips and hasty acrobatics, and crossing a scrub, they come out on another sandy road. To one side stands a large, whitewashed ranch, a light shining through a small window, and, to the other, they can sense the splashing and unmistakable smell of the river. A sudden watery upheaval betrays the rise and immediate submergence
of a large fish. Chacho probably hasn't even heard it, and though Nula and Gutiérrez are both familiar with the sound, it produces, because they don't often hear it, a sense of pleasure.

Chacho, passing the flashlight beam quickly over the roof and white facade of the ranch, says,
That's my house
, and turns back toward the river.

A cluster of young acacias struggle near the riverbank.

—Watch your step, the water's up, Chacho says, and he stops so suddenly that Nula and Gutiérrez, pressed together under the umbrella and colliding as they brake, almost run him over. He passes the bright beam over the trees, the earth, the bank, the water, and eventually the light collides, somewhat weakly, against the vegetation on an island across the river. As the light beam retraces the same path, in reverse, Nula is able to make out, on the surface of the river, the parallel waves pocked with rainfall and formed by opposite forces, the downstream current and the wind from the southeast, apparently the same ones they saw upriver earlier that day, and whether they're the same waves or identical waves it's difficult to know, because the law of becoming, manifested here as false repetition, constructs its shabby platform of permanence right in the eye of the whirlwind.

A red canoe, shining in the rain, rocks gently among the reeds. Three damp ropes, tied to the trunk of a tree, extend from the water's edge. Chacho studies them a moment and then, crouching, grabs one of the three, lifts it slightly, and starts to haul it in, energetically but carefully. Then he turns around and extends the flashlight to Nula.

—Shine it here, please, he orders politely. Obligingly, Gutiérrez raises the umbrella slightly, not enough to cover the other two, and Nula, with a hint of treachery, thinks he must want to play a part in the scene—singular, at least to men from the city—that is developing in the rainy darkness. Pulling up on the rope, slowly, carefully,
Chacho takes out a wooden cage built from a wine case, its interior compartments disassembled and a few panels added to the outside to cover the openings without closing them off completely, allowing the cage to fill with water when it's submerged.

—Shine it here, Chacho repeats, brusquely, and, releasing a few hooks, opens the lid. Nula points the flashlight at the opening, and the white circle shines into the bottom of the cage. Two gleaming, silver fish with long whiskers and trembling dorsal fins twist desperately inside, and, lunging spastically, they collide and crash against the walls of the cage. With a single, deft movement, Chacho, who, in his burlap cloak, looks like a priest at some ancient ritual, grabs one of the fish by the middle, near the dorsal fin, and without straightening up, moves it slightly away from the cage into the flashlight beam, flips it belly-up, and splits it with a single incision, liberating it, Nula thinks, from the spasm of agony that still convulses the other, removing it forever from its strange fishy universe, as incomprehensible to the fish as to the three men standing overhead, a universe that, as cruel and adverse as it might seem, has yet to be seized from his associate struggling at the bottom of the cage. After splitting the fish, Chacho drops the knife on the ground, inserts his free hand into the open belly, and, in one tug, yanks out its guts and throws them into the river, causing, as they hit the water, a sudden upheaval, a noisy and violent tremor, as other, hungry fish struggle over the unexpected offering. Chacho places the dead fish on the ground, picks up the knife, and, with the same quickness, carries out the same operation on the second fish. Then he carries both fish to the water and washes them in the river, and then his hands, and finally, standing up and taking from his pocket a wrinkled plastic bag emblazoned with a green W from the hypermarket, drops the two fish inside and extends the bag to Gutiérrez.

—Here, he says.

Nula follows their movements with the white flashlight beam, but because of how close they are the circle is constrained and the only things that appear in the beam of light are their arms, a section of their bodies at waist level, and the plastic bag, whose logo Nula recognizes. Gutiérrez's free hand goes into his pocket and comes out with a few bills, moving toward the hand that's just given him the bag; this other hand shakes vigorously in the white light while Chacho's voice, from the darkness above, firmly protests.

—No, sir, I couldn't. Those fish belong to the club. When you need some more, I can sell you some of my own if you want.

—Thank you, Gutiérrez says in a grateful voice (maybe too grateful, Nula thinks, not feeling, because he's never left the area, the same fervency toward this altogether commonplace situation) from some vague space in the rainy darkness between the white circle that illuminates the lower parts of their bodies, on the sandy riverbank, and the multicolored umbrella above their heads.

—If you're going to Doctor Russo's house, don't go by the river side at this hour, Chacho says. Take the road instead. It's easy from here.

He holds out his hand for the flashlight. The quick movements, the change of hands and direction, make the beam of light land randomly, a fleeting disorder, on fragments of distant and near things, on trees, on the grayish, slanting rain, on the earth, the river, and their bodies, disparate moments of space and time floating in the blackness, which to Nula seem a more accurate representation of the empirical world than the double superstition of coherence and continuity that men have grown accustomed to under the constant somnolence that the tyranny of the rational enforces. They move away from the river again. Chacho walks at the head of the group, through the young acacias punished by the rain, by the season, and, most likely, by the rise and fall of the water. The coastline silence is undisturbed by the rain, and when they have moved far enough
from the water that they can no longer hear its rhythmic splashing at the riverbank, all that is heard is the sound of their steps, snapping, scuffling, against sand, water, weeds, wet mud, a complex but sustained rhythm interspersed with the ephemeral dissonance of scrambling or involuntary interjections. When they are close to the ranch, Chacho veers off to the left, and the flashlight beam tracks from his sandals some ten or fifteen meters ahead, illuminating what appears to be a road. Above it, at a distance that's difficult to measure, possibly two or even three blocks ahead, appears a row of streetlights, shining tenuously.

—This here runs into the road. When you get there, turn right, to the north, and it's only a few minutes to the Russo place. Here, he says, and puts the flashlight back in Nula's hand. Give it to Doctor Escalante tomorrow or the day after, or bring it by the club.

—Thanks for everything, Nula says.

—Not a problem, Chacho says. Good luck.

—Right, Nula says. Now that it's over it's stopped.

—So it goes, Chacho says, laughing, and he disappears into the darkness. They listen to the fading sound of his sandals, which must be completely soaked, snapping as they hit the ground. Gutiérrez stands motionless, looking into the darkness where the other has disappeared.

—Sergio must have some good left in him, for his friends to treat us like this, he says in a low voice, but loud enough for Nula to hear. Then he turns and walks alongside Nula, who shines the light across the successive fragments of ground they venture over. When they reach the first streetlight, Nula turns off the flashlight, and though a few small, isolated ranches have begun to appear, they keep to the middle of the road. Three horses are pastured in the darkness, near an unplastered brick house. Out of curiosity, Nula turns on the flashlight and illuminates them, but the horses don't even look up: all three are in the same position, their necks angled
toward the ground, their teeth pulling at the grass, their heads still, two of them parallel to the street, facing opposite each other, and a third, who's only visible at the hindquarters, its tail shaking slightly. Nula turns off the flashlight.

When they reach the paved road Nula slips climbing up the embankment and Gutiérrez grabs his arm with the hand that carries the plastic bag—the other holds up the multicolored umbrella—to keep him from falling over. They cross the road so as to walk against traffic, and their steps become noisier, but also more firm, against the asphalt paving. For a while, they walk without speaking. They pass a brightly lit, empty gas station on the left, and on their right the main road into town, the illuminated, perpendicular streets that extend from the road toward the town center, the square, the levees built up against the floods, the river. Every so often, the headlights of an oncoming car force them to step onto the shoulder, into the mud and saturated weeds, and when the car passes they step back onto the pavement, moving more easily again. For a good stretch they seem to have forgotten each other, but every time headlights appear against the black backdrop of the lamp-lit, asphalt road, gleaming in the rain, they step sideways in a way that appears practiced and synchronized, without advance notice, deftly and exact, onto the shoulder. In the quickly approaching headlights the invisible rain takes on a fleeting, grayish materiality that is vaguely spectral, dense, and slanting, pierced by the beams, shining, and then, as they pass, is suddenly swallowed again by the darkness. And after the car has passed, Nula turns on the flashlight and the circle of white light, at once steady and mobile, restores it.

Of all the witnesses from that time
, Gabriela Barco said,
he's turned out to be the most useful—he remembers everything
. And Soldi:
He can recite from memory entire books that the authors themselves don't even remember writing
. After he first met Gutiérrez, by the swimming pool, when he happened to run into the two of them at the Amigos
del Vino bar and Soldi hinted that Lucía might actually be his daughter, they started describing their interviews with Gutiérrez on the literary scene in the city during the fifties.
His Roman Law professor, Doctor Calcagno—that is, Lucía Riera's legal father—got him a job at his firm, where he was partners with Mario Brando, a firm that, by the way, was one of the most important in the city at the time
, Soldi said. And Gabriela:
Brando was the head of the precisionist movement; the precisionist specialty consisted of integrating traditional poetic forms with the language of the sciences. They made some waves at the time. Gutiérrez, though he had nothing to do with the movement, saw Brando constantly, because he worked for him, and while his bosses went about their political and literary lives, he did all the work for the firm. He worked there for a while until one day—it was Rosemberg who first told us this, but Gutiérrez later confirmed it, implicitly—suddenly, without saying goodbye to anyone, and without anyone knowing why, he disappeared. The other day, Gutiérrez explained why he left: besides his three friends—Rosemberg, Escalante, and César Rey—he didn't have anyone else in the world.
Because they were working, Soldi and Gabriela had a stack of papers on the table, and Soldi's briefcase, as usual, sat open on the chair next to him, within reach, containing papers, books, index cards, pencils, and so on, which he would arrange and rearrange. He grabbed a notepad, and, while he talked, consulted the notes that he'd been taking during the interview, which they'd also recorded:
He remembered the first and last names of almost every precisionist because Calcagno had taken him to quite a few meetings and because Brando, who never invited the group's members to the law firm, would sometimes send him on errands for the group. Brando was a true strategist, and Gutiérrez says that despite his apparent lack of empathy, his talent for publicity and organization was undeniable.
And Gabriela:
Not only does he remember everything, but the act itself, when our questions require it, seems to cause him incredible pleasure. All it takes is a name, a date, or the title of a book or a magazine, and he starts
talking in that calm voice, which doesn't change even when he's recalling polemics, betrayals, or suicides. He seems to get the same pleasure from it that someone else might get from describing Paradise, but he doesn't try to gloss or hide anything, and in that same smooth, even tone, he can be ironic, disdainful, mocking, and cruel.
Turning the pages of his notebook, backward, rereading his notes to find what he's looking for, Soldi continued speaking without looking up:
Before leaving, he said, he burned all his papers, stories, poems, and essays, and he left for Buenos Aires intending to commit himself to writing, but he happened to meet a movie producer who offered him a job proofreading screenplays that were about to be filmed. And with what he made from that he left for Europe. As a joke, he recited a few poems that he'd written at the time, and that, in his own words, despite having been burned before he left the city, had been impossible to forget, which illustrated the Buddhist belief in reincarnation: not being able to forget his own poems proved that he was paying for his crimes in another life. I jotted down two verses: “The rigging will never see this port / there will be no other moment for your sadness.”