La Grande (40 page)

Drying the sweat from his face with his forearm, Nula turns over; above him, in the blue sky turning white in the intense light, the sun, declining from the zenith, blazing, a metal yellow fusion that splinters and overflows from the circular nucleus, is impossible to look at directly. When he closes his eyelids, he brings with him several golden blotches, vibrating and shifting on his retina, and which take a long time to diffuse into the reddish darkness that protects his pupils. Groping at the lawn, he picks up the towel and covers his genitals again. With his eyes narrowed, his forehead slightly wrinkled, and his mouth half-open, exposing his clenched teeth, his face has a look of suffering, but no thought, neither unhappy nor joyful, reaches a state of consciousness inside him, and his expression is rather the result of lying in the sun, exploiting its energy and at the same time suffering the flame that, indifferent and almost disdainfully, scorches him, but which with the slightest act of carelessness would consume him. After a while, he takes a drink of water and pouring a small amount in his hand splashes it on his face and then he puts the almost empty jug of water under the shade of the chair again and turns back over. But less than a minute after turning into that position Diana reappears, clean, dressed in a flowered skirt and a white linen jacket the starched lapels of which conceal her prominent chest, crossing just below the very low, angled side pockets that allow her to bury her stump
in the left side and hang her purse from her forearm. The upper straps of her relatively high-heeled white sandals are tied above her ankle bone. She carries Nula's cell phone and a scrap of paper. Nula turns over and sits up slightly on his elbows.

—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.