La Grande (36 page)

—El Bebe, Nula says, smiling softly and shaking his head theatrically.

—He's a shark for business, apparently, La India says.

—It wouldn't surprise me, Nula says.

It was already after twelve, but La India, comfortable in her chair behind her desk and in her conversation with Nula, hadn't
yet decided to close the store. Her two employees—although she isn't a rabid feminist, La India prefers, on principle, to give priority to hiring women—have already left for lunch. The extraordinarily bright April morning is visible in the street, through the window, and the light reflects, on the opposite sidewalk, off the side of the courthouse building. There's not a single cloud in the sky. As he left his house, around ten, to visit a client at the other end of the city, in Guadalupe, before coming to the bookstore, Nula stood for a moment, measuring the temperature, and finally decided to go back inside and change, leaving behind the jacket and putting on lighter pants than he'd worn the day before. When he saw the cloudless sky, a vivid memory returned of the static, massive, white clouds that he'd seen the day before on his way to Rincón to deliver Gutiérrez's wine order so that the bottles could rest a while in case he decided to serve them on Sunday; he'd run into Soldi and Gabriela just as he was turning off the pavement onto the sandy road, and had talked with them a while, but when he arrived at Gutiérrez's the woman who took care of the house told him that he'd gone for a walk in the countryside, and so he unloaded the wine, walked a while along the street, with no apparent goal, and then returned to the city. This morning, on his way to Guadalupe, in the porous and radiant ten o'clock light, he thought he could perceive the probably fleeting return of summer. It was still early when he finished with the client, so he'd decided to have a cup of coffee at the pastry shop on the lagoon, which, before one of the recent floods inundated the beach forever, when it was still crowded with people, had once been a fashionable place. He watched the water in the lagoon form ripples, still a milky beige, and in the silence of the bar, in which he's the only customer and from which even the waiter has disappeared, into the back rooms or the rear courtyard, he'd started to think about Lucía, but also about Diana, with a remote sense of anguish, like a soldier returning from a pointless
war. The sun, high at this point, rising, almost in front of him, from the east, warmed his face and covered the water, the distant vegetation on the opposite shore, the empty sky, with a golden shimmer. A few drops of sweat dampened his forehead and his upper lip, and his freshly shaved cheeks burned slightly. When he walked into the bookstore, La India looked at him a moment, and as he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, asked him, in a low voice so that the employees, who were still in the office, wouldn't hear:

—What's wrong?

Nula took his time before answering. He walked back around the desk and sat down opposite her.

—My mother doesn't love me, he said, smiling.

—
He who lives most, loves most, a lie
, La India quotes, and taking, as usual, Nula's appeal for affection (believing he needs the protection less than her eldest son), like the whim of a
cynical fin de siècle dandy
, as she'd once described him, in love with her verbal invention, and repeating it often, makes the gesture of symbolically washing her hands of him and goes on to tell him about the call she got from El Bebe.

Law textbooks are stacked on the shelves, on the edges of the desk, on a table, and on the floor, in neat piles, or carefully displayed in cases or in unopened packages, or otherwise recently packaged, prepared to be sent to customers in towns or cities close to the capital. At random, Nula reads, silently, disinterestedly, the titles on the covers and the spines:
A Treatise on the Law of Promissory Notes and Bills of Exchange, Handbook of the Argentine Constitution, Notarial Practice, International Public Law, Annotated Civil Code, National Law of Administrative Procedure, Civil and Commercial Prosecutorial Code of the Province
. Shaking his head and sighing, Nula asks:

—Is Calcagno's
Roman Law Course
still sold?

—There are more current books, but it's still a reference. It's in every bibliography, La India says. Why?

—What made you want to sell such boring books? Nula says, as though he hadn't heard the question, and the moment the words are out, although he's looked away and therefore can't see the look of displeasure on La India's face, he knows that he's just added cruelty to what was already a blunder. But when he meets La India's eyes he sees only a vague, mocking irony, as though his mother hadn't heard a thing. The brutal question that, without knowing why, takes shape in his mind every so often, but which never surfaces, nor in all likelihood will ever reach his lips, now occupies the bright space of his mind, tantalizing and insistent:
What if it were us, his wife and his sons, who he was actually fed up with, and a heroic sacrifice was just a pretext for starting his successive escapes, first to politics, then to the underground, and finally to death?
But instead of formulating it, despite its peremptory insistence—he loves La India too much to allow himself anything more than the occasional minor blunder—he smiles and thinks again that, ever since he arrived at the bookstore, first with the memory of the cornfield and now with the question that sometimes rises from the blackness, tantalizing, insistently, in his conscience, his frontal bone has intercepted the width of the desk, the bright and calm space that separates him from his mother, taking, behind his forehead, the empirically measurable distance and multiplying it by infinity. Finally consenting to answer La India's question, in the most cheerful tone he can muster, he says:

—No reason. We sold it a lot at the kiosk. All I know about Roman law is the famous precept:
Mater certa, pater semper incertus
, and along with a deliberately atrocious pronunciation of the Latin phrase, Nula shakes his extended index finger in the air, threateningly and apodictically.

—The constant specter of masculinity, La India says as she checks her watch.

—Oh, don't let me keep you; I'll get up and leave right now, Nula says, obviously parodying an offended tone.

—On the contrary, La India says. This is the happiest moment of my life. After this I'm retiring to a convent to reflect upon the blessing of having you as a son. But I thought you had a meeting at twelve thirty. Don't forget that they're my clients too and I don't want you to spoil them for me.

—My mother does love me, Nula says, and, looking at his watch, announces, But there's still fifteen minutes left and it's right next door.

It's true. La India had recommended some friends of hers, lawyers, cops, judges, and since it's Friday and the courthouse closes for the weekend at noon, five of them had organized a group purchase at the law school, which is just a few meters away, on the same block as the bookstore. Nula expects to make a good sale—afterward, he plans to return home (maybe take some sun, which seems to be as hot as in November) before going back out, to
the supercenter
, where the Amigos del Vino promotional stand is set to open.

—Mami, Nula says. On Sunday, Diana and I have a cookout in Rincón. Would you be able to tolerate your grandchildren for a whole day?

—Of course I would, La India says. It'll be nice to interact with people somewhat more mature than my own children.

—I assume you're not referring to me, Nula says, and standing up and walking around the desk, he leans toward her and kisses her forehead. You're amazing, India, he says, and picks up his briefcase and turns toward the door.

—All that show just to avoid telling me what's wrong, La India says.

—I swear if I knew what it was I'd tell you, Nula says, and without turning around he waves goodbye with his free hand and walks out to the sidewalk after closing the door behind him. Although the sidewalk is still shaded by the houses, the air feels very warm, in contrast to the cool atmosphere inside the bookstore. Across the street, meanwhile, on the courthouse side, the April light shimmers, pervasive, becomes once again summery over the last two or three days. Nula remembers, again, the sky the day before, in which bright white masses of clouds, their curvy edges clean and hard, floated, static, scattered across the blue sky. An unexpected nostalgia for the day before attacks him, and the idea of constant flux, of
the becoming
, is embodied in those clouds that existed and that, bit by bit, unseen by the eye or by the mind, transforming, scattering, stopped being clouds and disappeared without anyone knowing it. Now, the day before seems like an intimate possession that, suddenly, he's been dispossessed of: because it's still impregnated with fresh traces of sensation, of experience, he senses that it's more his own than the totality of his past, knowing at the same time that, like a dead body, its deceitful presence disguises the immeasurable distance that separates the present moment from its obliterated precursors, the fossilized substance of the memories of the flesh that pulses, sees, hears, touches, feels, and breathes.

Although it's not yet twelve thirty when he enters the law school, three doors down, the five potential clients, and two more they've brought with them, are already there. They invite him into a small conference room with a large, oval table surrounded by numerous chairs, and they sit down to listen to him, as though he were giving a lecture. Nula opens his briefcase and takes out his brochures, magazines, and price lists, yet despite his movements being exact and his words measured, he continues to think about the clouds the day before, so intensely white, the shape of rocks, now disappeared, and he regrets not having written something down in his
notebook before coming in, because he doesn't know how long the interview with these clients will last and whether he'll remember what, though he never formulated it exactly in his mind, he thought, at some point, to note down. The clients want to buy an assortment of a dozen bottles each, which is why they'd gotten together, in order to buy a few cases of six, of different varieties and from different wineries, and split them up. In total, it's eighty-four bottles—with the sale he made that morning in Guadalupe, he's earned enough for the day. But when he explains to the clients the unique characteristics of each wine, the technical terms that he employs and that his clients seem to consider attentively don't seem at all convincing, suitable, or appropriate. The essential thing, the taste of wine, is unnamable: the metaphors and comparisons are only allusions. The flinty aroma of certain white wines, for instance, is only a comparative, and incomplete, description, predominant at the beginning, but which combines immediately, after the first sip, with the complex flavors that the wine unfolds over the palate. To him, the sensations, from a philosophical point of view, are incommunicable, and so when he explains to a client that such and such a wine is tender or robust, meaty or velvety, it's impossible to imagine how the client senses those adjectives when he tries the wine. Comparisons are more useful from an empirical point of view than those metaphors, but they don't describe the flavor of wine itself, only one of its qualities, the sudden recollection of a fleeting spark, smothered immediately by the mass of sensations poorly designated by the abstraction known as
the taste of wine
. Another obstacle follows that philosophical complication: wine is in fashion. That's fine enough for Nula, but that somewhat coarse daily novelty, not entirely disconnected from a dogged publicity campaign, easily reveals a sordid contradiction: the fashion for wine gives enthusiasts the illusion of cultivating an exquisite, rationalized individuality, while he, the common denominator among them,
knows all the ways they've been primed by advertising. What he really likes are the hints of flavor that surface every so often in every bottle, in every glass, and even in every sip, and then evaporate, an empirical spark that precipitates unexpected memories, of fruit, of flowers, of honey, of apricot, of grass, of spices, of wood, or of leather. Unforeseeable and fleeting, those sensorial sparks that, paradoxically, make the taste of wine more strange and unknown, ignite suddenly in the mind, promise a vivid display, but immediately after they appear, surreptitiously, are snuffed out.

He sells them eighty-four bottles, five cases of white and nine of red: among the white, a chardonnay-chenin blend, two chardonnays, a sémillon from Río Negro, and one sauvignon blanc, the same wine they drank three bottles of last night—the first paid for by himself, the second by Tomatis, and the third by Soldi—at the Amigos del Vino bar. Among the reds, he suggested a few varieties, a malbec, a merlot, a syrah, and a few blends, a mixture of cabernet sauvignon and merlot, for instance, which Nula never forgets to describe as a fundamental blend in the production of Bordeaux wine, something which, as a consumer incentive, never fails. At around two, he's arriving at his house; the kids are at nursery school and Diana is tanning, naked, out back, lying on a plastic mat in the yard. A red bathrobe, glowing in the sun, is hanging from a wicker chair. When she sees him come out, she picks up a small towel and covers her pubis and hips, hiding the triangular patch of pubic hair and the protuberance that marks the beginning of an even more intimate region; the rest of her body, from her head to just below her bellybutton, and from the tops of her thighs to her feet, remains exposed to the sun, and her skin, still darkened by the summer sun, has a light shine, and is dampened, especially on her face and around her breasts. Her arms, stretched out alongside her body, display the only visible asymmetry, product of her missing left hand.