La Grande

by Juan José Saer

  When he reaches the head of the table, Gutiérrez passes behind Amalia and starts backing up, still filming, to capture the gathering at the table again, moving away, panning out, until finally, when he’s several meters from the pavilion, in the middle of the courtyard, he stops, lowers the camera, which had hidden his face, and because the demands of the filming had caused him to be slightly hunched over, he straightens up, displaying a satisfied smile. From the pavilion, Tomatis, taking advantage of Gutiérrez’s distraction and his isolation in the middle of the courtyard, at the right distance for the camera to capture his whole body, lifts the camera to his face, closing his left eye and resting his right against the eyepiece, but when he presses the release there’s no reaction from the machine, empty because the ten prints on the roll have been used up. Attempting to disguise the catastrophe, feeling slightly ridiculous, Tomatis lowers the camera, not realizing that Nula, from the table, has seen what happened and is grinning mockingly, and then returns to the other end of the table, puts the camera back in Violeta’s bag as he passes, and lets himself fall into his chair.

  No one serves themselves any more meat, though there’s still a full strip left on the grill, along with some chorizos and blood sausage. Considering the cookout finished, Faustino stacks everything on the edge of the grill so that it doesn’t overcook while staying warm in case someone changes their mind and decides to take another piece. But a short while later, seeing that no one seems to want another round, he removes the leftovers from the grill and arranges them on a dish. Amalia stands up and starts to clear the table, and, seeing her, Violeta and Clara Rosemberg do the same, and the three women walk in a line toward the kitchen and disappear into the house. Diana removes the prosthetic fork, keeping the leather wristband in place, and sets it on the table, and Nula, without hesitating, picks it up along with an empty salad dish and its corresponding wood utensils, walks across the courtyard, and disappears into the house. As he walks away, Gabriela, discreetly watching his movements, thinks, He must love her very much, unless he reserves that deference exclusively for the public. But, though she doesn’t know why, she hates herself for the cruelty of the thought; she took a dislike to him because of an absurd dream in which Nula served her a live fish as a mean joke, when the poor guy isn’t at all responsible for her dream. Gabriela forgets that her antipathy preceded the dream, and that when they were talking between the cars, when they were on their way back from lunch at Gutiérrez’s and he was on his way there to drop off some cases of wine, she was already bothered by his over-confident womanizer attitude. But Gabriela immediately forgets Nula and remembers that Thursday afternoon, the blue sky after the rain the led up to it, and the giant, bright white masses of scattered clouds that seemed motionless but which by the afternoon, when she was walking to the Amigos del Vino bar, had already disappeared.

  Nula comes out of the house before the women, bringing Diana’s fork, now washed and dried, and walks to the large, straw bag, where they’d carried the wine and where he’s kept his neatly folded pants (he put his shirt back on before sitting down at the table), and from which he now takes a long cardboard box containing two or three metal prostheses with various functions, and puts the fork in it. The bag also contains a sketch pad and a box of colored pencils that Diana always carries with her whenever she travels or goes out the countryside for an afternoon or attends an unusual event, and which could be considered her tools, visual rather than textual, for taking notes. Just then, of the three women in the house, Violeta is the first to come out: she carries a rag to clean the table and a stack of dessert plates, and almost immediately, following her closely, Clara appears with another stack of plates, and when Violeta finishes cleaning the table and starts distributing the plates, Clara does the same with hers, placing on each of them a small desert fork that clinks faintly against the white china. Tomatis signals to Violeta, who leans in to hear what he whispers to her, and when Tomatis finishes speaking, Violeta nods in a way that makes her look like an obedient young girl, and goes back inside. Before she walks in, she steps aside for Amalia, who’s carrying the two alfajores. Marcos, in a serious tone, says, They’re from this morning, pointing when Amalia places them, one next to the other, in the middle of the table. They’re wrapped in white paper that for now Amalia does not unwrap. And, directing himself to the table at large, with the same seriousness of his first qualification, Marcos adds, They couldn’t be any fresher. Amalia returns to the house, but when she’s about to go inside she has to step aside, exactly like Violeta had to do several moments before in order to let her pass, thinks Tomatis, who watches them from the end of the table, and who was watching the door with some anxiety, asking himself if Violeta had found what he’d sent her in the house to look for, smiling with relief when he sees her come out of the house with the supermarket bag emblazoned with the red W that corresponds to the meat section and which contains the mysterious object that Violeta hands over discreetly when she reaches Tomatis, who places it carefully on the corner of the table, between himself and Lucía. Finally, Amalia comes out of the house with a special knife and a cake spatula that, as she moves across the courtyard toward the pavilion along the white slabs and then the grass, catches the sun.

  Clara and Violeta sit down in their respective seats, and when Amalia reaches the table Gutiérrez asks her for the knife and the spatula and, getting to his feet with an elaborate bow, extends them to Clara Rosemberg; without hesitating a second, Clara receives them and, after Soldi pushes the alfajores to her from the center of the table, she picks them up delicately, places them side-by-side, and unwraps them extremely slowly, revealing two bright white circles fifty centimeters in diameter and six or seven thick. The entire surface is covered in a fragile shell of frosted sugar, and when the knife begins to cautiously slice more or less equivalent segments from the circle, neither the three layers of dough separated by a dulce de leche filling nor the solidified white bath that covers the cracks, indisputable proof, as though anyone would doubt the word of Marcos Rosemberg, of their freshness. Clara places the segments of the circle on the white plates as they are passed to her, and these then move between hands until they reach the seat of their intended recipients. After serving the last slice—there are still four or five pieces of the second alfajor left—Clara sits down and, after checking to make sure that she hasn’t forgotten anyone, starts to eat her own.

  —It’s time, Tomatis says after they’ve finished eating the dessert and an indecisive silence has settled on the table. Opening the plastic bag, he takes out a large box of Romeo y Julieta cigars, his favorite brand, and tearing off the sticker that holds it closed, he lifts the lid and extends the box to José Carlos, who exults at the neat rows of thick cigars before picking one and passing the box to Soldi, who examines them quickly, curiously, before giving the box to Clara Rosemberg. Clara and Marcos study the contents and take out a second cigar. The box passes around the table to Gutiérrez, who seems ecstatic over the situation, and after looking admiringly at the rows of cigars, passes the open box to Nula without serving himself. Nula, studying the box, feigns a look of skepticism, which creates a degree of anticipation at the table, until finally, still scrutinizing the cigars suspiciously, he says loudly, Che, Tomatis, they swindled you—this box is full of Romeos! General laughter receives the joke and the box continuous its course, without stopping, to Tomatis, who offers it to Faustino, who rejects it emphatically, shouting, I don’t smoke! Tomatis takes a cigar for himself, closes the box, puts it back in the plastic hypermarket bag to protect it from the heat, and leaves it on the table.

  José Carlos smokes a cigar alone, but Tomatis and Violeta, Clara and Marcos Rosemberg smoke it in pairs: they pass it back and forth every so often, pulling slowly and loudly, and then return it. Clara narrows her eyes, apparently concentrating, before every pull, and discharges mouthfuls of thick, gray smoke into the warm afternoon air, while Marcos regularly checks the fire at the end. All of them, with the exception of Tomatis, a
re occasional smokers, what you might call enthusiasts, but, under the circumstances, their pleasure is apparently authentic. They are, in fact, happy under that pavilion, outside that house, with that company and that singular host who disappeared from the city one day without telling anyone and reappeared, for good it seems, some thirty years later, with the same economy of explanations as when he left. A gentle mutual acceptance, a surrender to the moment, allows them an unexpected sense of well-being, removing them from the internal murmur, the solitary rumination, that fills the hours of the day, allowing them to find in the external, like a momentary source of relief, an interesting and pleasurable life, if only for a few moments, in the exceptionally hot April Sunday that gives them the illusion of living in an endless vacation. The wine, in particular, has contributed to that sensation, and now the cigars provide the moment with a meditative perfection. Their words are slower, more carefully thought out than usual, and private conversations have disappeared in favor of a collective attention to which anyone who speaks directs themselves. Everyone hopes for something interesting from the others, not a revelation so much as a story, a well-turned series of events that lead to an unexpected conclusion, to a surprising and unforeseen situation, filling the colorlessness of time with a bright glow as they’re recorded by the imagination, settling like a layer of sediment in a glass of wine in their at once receptive and deceitful memories. And suddenly, Violeta begins: after taking a pull from the cigar, she hands it back to Tomatis, and while she exhales the smoke she says that during the dictatorship, during the terror, when fear, disgust, randomness, cruelty, and pain occupied everything, in the middle of the contempt and the killing, things happened that were simultaneously agonizing and comical, so absurd sometimes that they ended up being hilarious. Because at that time the military was hunting out so-called subversive books, people were forced to scatter their libraries, burning or burying suspicious books in the backs of their courtyards. One night she was having dinner at the house of a studious but incredibly naive colleague, and when she commented on a set of books covered in brightly colored striped paper he’d explained to her that they were among the books considered subversive at the time and that he’d covered them like that so if the police came they wouldn’t be able to read what was written on their spines. Good idea, wasn’t it? Tomatis adds to reinforce the effect of Violeta’s story, intending to make it more humorous to its recipients. Several people laugh, and Faustino, impatient to tell his own story but somewhat inhibited by the size of his audience and the anxious gaze of Amalia who, from the other end of the table, seems to fear an incongruous comment from her husband, refers to some neighbors in La Toma, public servants who one afternoon were taking some fresh air at their window when they saw a caravan of Ford Falcons, from whose open windows extended the barrels of machine guns, coming down the street, which prompted the woman to say to her husband that they must be looking for someone and that they must be making a raid, and since they weren’t guilty of anything they remained sitting calmly in the window. But it was their house that they were coming to. Twelve men got out, all armed, and entered the house, but they didn’t touch anything, they simply wanted to terrorize them, and by the next week the couple was already in Barcelona. After the dictatorship they returned, and they still laugh when they remember what the woman said, and tell it to their friends, They must be making a raid, and, according to Faustino, it turned out that they were coming to theirs.

  Amalia relaxes, and Faustino, still excited by the success of his story, collapses into his chair, satisfied. And then Marcos Rosemberg interjects from the other end of the table, using the cigar as a kind of pointer with which he underscores his words. He once had to go to some military official—a sort of legal advisor to General Negri who had the rank of colonel, celebrated for his bad faith and his dangerousness and his evil nature in particular—to get some information about a disappearance. The colonel asked him in and ordered him to sit down on the other side of the desk, and without speaking to him again he continued doodling on a paper for several minutes, deliberately forcing him to wait as a way to assert his authority. He finally looked up and gave him a studied look somewhere between inquisitive and severe, and so he, Marcos, started to inform him that he was there as an attorney, trying to get some information on the whereabouts of someone who’d disappeared three days ago, but the colonel, pounding the table, shouted that no one had disappeared in the country, only subversives who’d fled abroad to escape justice and that to pretend otherwise amounted to an insult to the armed forces and to the government. The problem was that, with the violence of the punch that he’d given to the desk, his wig had shifted slightly on his head, and his supposed assertion of authority was contradicted by the incongruence of the poorly pasted wig against his scalp. Drunk on his own words, the colonel continued to pontificate and threaten, but Marcos wasn’t listening any more, and was instead making a tremendous effort not to start laughing, fearing, simultaneously, that if the colonel’s state of excitement didn’t subside his wig would fall off his head, and as the situation continued, it became increasingly obvious to Marcos that if the colonel realized it, he was a dead man, he’d never walk out to the street again. And so, in the middle of the colonel’s speech he stood up, making to leave, muttering that they’d never see eye-to-eye, but with two energetic strides the colonel walked around the desk and stopped thirty centimeters from his face, giving him the most threatening look available in his repertory. But with his sudden movements the wig had shifted even more and was now almost hanging over his left ear. Split between laughter and fear, Marcos decided to exaggerate his fear, thinking that if he didn’t manage to contain himself and started to laugh the colonel would think it was out of nervousness. Suddenly the colonel gave him his most underhanded insult, addressing him as tú, and shouted, You’ll walk out that door or it’ll cost you dearly! and Marcos turned toward the door just as the first wave of laughter started to shake him, just like a retching before vomiting, and the colonel, seeing him from behind, must have thought that he was shaking so much out of terror, and ratcheting up his insults as Marcos was crossing the doorway, he muttered, Bolshevik shitbag! But Marcos continued laughing, so much so that the soldier who was on guard, without knowing the reason, started laughing too, infected by it. And when he got in his car and started driving along the waterfront toward his house and remembered that the colonel had called him a Bolshevik even though he hadn’t been a communist for years, because he’d become a socialist, he told himself that, for a security agent, he seemed very poorly informed, and this detail redoubled his laughter, though he didn’t know, ultimately, if his laughter was humorous or nervous.

  Now it was José Carlos’s turn. He’d also lived through an experience that was at once hilarious and agonizing. Like many other members of the university, students, staff, professors, he’d received several threats over the telephone, and at first he hadn’t taken them seriously, until someone told him that some army commandos were looking for him, and that he would be kidnapped, and he was forced to leave the city and go to Buenos Aires, where it would be easier than in Rosario for him to go unnoticed. A friend loaned him an apartment in an isolated neighborhood, and to avoid being recognized he decided to change his appearance: he shaved his beard, dyed his hair blonde, and changed his hairstyle. He also dressed differently, less formally, more in keeping with the current fashion, but in a subdued way so as to not call too much attention to himself. When José Carlos says that he dyed his hair blonde, there’s laughter among the listeners, and Gabriela grabs his arm, smiling tenderly, and rests her head on his shoulder. It’s clear that she’s heard the story many times before, but his past troubles, though she enjoys hearing about them, knowing the ending already, also move her because of the real danger he faced during those dark times. Almost immediately she releases José Carlos’s arm and sits back up in her seat. And José Carlos continues: during a February siesta, when the heat was unbearable, because he was drowning in his frien
d’s apartment, he decided to sit a while under the trees of a nearby plaza, where it would be cooler. Though he never went out, while he was in Rosario, without a suit and tie, he put on a sleeveless shirt, what people call a muscle shirt, board shorts, and sandals, and picked up a leather satchel and went out into the street. He thought that the long, curly blonde hair, his summer tan, and his lack of a beard would make him impossible to recognize, but as he was walking into the plaza, which was practically deserted at that hour, he saw a man sitting on a bench near the corner, watching him openly, but hesitant, unsure if he knew him or not. When he was approaching the bench, José Carlos recognized him immediately: it was a staff member of the department in Rosario, who hadn’t seemed very trustworthy to him, and who must have been passing through Buenos Aires. He tried to act nonchalant as he passed him, but feeling the other man scrutinizing him, trying to decide if it was or wasn’t the assistant professor of economics whom he saw every day at school. Rather than sitting on a bench as he’d imagined he would, José Carlos continued across the plaza at a diagonal, but before disappearing down an adjacent street he turned around visibly and saw that the man had stood up alongside the bench and continued to watch him, intrigued.

  He felt finished. For a while he went outside as little as possible, and, of course, he never went back to that plaza again. A few months later, thanks to the intervention of the Italian embassy, which had given him and many other descendants of Italians dual citizenship, he was able to travel and he moved to Milan. One day, a colleague from Rosario came to visit him and he told him the story. But the colleague, laughing, told José Carlos that he already knew it, because the staff member at the department had told everyone that one day, completely by accident, during a vacation in Buenos Aires, he’d found out that José Carlos was a homosexual.