José Carlos’s classic and immaculate professorial appearance, almost severe in contrast to the picture the listeners have of the bleached blonde and shaggy man in sandals, carrying a handbag, his legs and shoulders exposed, is probably what provokes the widespread laughter, causing Riera to strike the edge of the table with the palm of his hand, Nula and Marcos Rosemberg to double over in their respective seats, Gutiérrez to remark on the story to Leonor Calcagno, and for the rest of them to revel in the story long after it is finished. Only Tomatis, who’d heard it before, smiles thoughtfully. Suddenly, in a spark of clairvoyance, he realizes why they are together, gathered around the table, relaxed and happy, because, he thinks, no one among them believes that the world belongs to them. They all know that they are apart from the human swarm deluded into thinking that it knows where it’s going, and that separation does not paralyze them, just the opposite, it actually seems to satisfy them. Every one of them, not to mention the owner of the house, who guards an impenetrable mystery behind his forehead, insists on being something other than what’s expected of them: the wine seller, for instance, who aspires to be a philosopher, or Soldi, the son of privilege who, rather than taking over the family business, prefers to take an interest in literature, or Marcos and Clara Rosemberg, who have been glued together for over thirty years despite the fact that she left him for their best friend and only returned after he threw himself under a train, and he, who’d let her go without a fight, received her with open arms when she decided to return to him. Or the girl with the stump whose remarkable beauty had been marred before she was even born by that conspicuous deformity to keep her perfection and radiance from overshadowing the goddess after whom she was named. Or the strange woman sitting next to Gutiérrez, whom he came back to the city for and who was no doubt a goddess to many in the past, and who, from an obsession with her supernal past, mutilates herself more every day in the vain hope of recovering it. And myself, who has been given the head of the table at this feast of the displaced as though coincidentally. Tomatis, within the slow smoke of the cigar, lets himself get tangled up in his thoughts, and suddenly an affection tinged with admiration for the people sitting at the table overcomes him: they’re right to be the way they are, apart from the crowd, flying solitarily in the empty sky, their destination uncertain, their delirium as their only compass, with no determined path to track along. And while it’s true that the ones who will one day wake the drowsy masses have walked among them for long stretches, it’s no less true that the ones who live at its margin, sometimes without even knowing it, are the most justified to judge it; they’re fodder for their own delirium, it’s true, but they’re also the color of the world.
Their arrivals were scattered, on their own or in small groups or pairs until the lunch gathered them under the pavilion, and now that the long meal has finished they scatter again across the courtyard or into the house. Gutiérrez and Leonor, along with the Rosembergs, have gone inside; Diana is sitting in a white lawn chair, sketching, under an umbrella that Gutiérrez himself set up so she could work in the shade; Riera and Nula are talking, still at the table, which has been cleared and cleaned completely by Clara, Violeta, and Amalia. After putting out the flames and cleaning the grill and taking the leftovers from the cookout to the large fridge, Faustino has disappeared; he’s actually sleeping a siesta in the shade, under a tree, an activity similar to what Tomatis is doing, lying on the lawn, under a tree, his head resting on Violeta’s thighs, her back resting, in turn, against the truck of a tree. José Carlos, Gabriela, and Soldi are talking on the bench at the back, and Lucía is playing in the swimming pool’s blue water, moving almost without making a sound. For now, she’s the only one not seeking the shade, but Diana hadn’t intended to either, and if Gutiérrez hadn’t set up the umbrella she would have continued sketching with her pencils, lost in her work, the afternoon heat forgotten. After setting up the umbrella, Gutiérrez glanced at the pad of paper on which Diana was sketching: there were fourteen blotches of color in an oval arrangement, plus one, the fifteenth, in which the color orange predominated, somewhat separated from the rest; the blotches, despite their abstraction, could vaguely suggest human shapes. Diana, realizing that Gutiérrez was looking at the sketch, explained, without looking up, It’s your guests sitting around the table. The different colors represent each person’s main qualities. Gutiérrez shook his head, asking, at the same time, And that orange blotch is the fire? Diana, still sketching, explained, No, that’s the owner of the house. Gutiérrez asked again, intrigued, And why the orange? And this time, Diana, looking him directly in the eyes, said, Among certain religions in India, it’s the color of surrender.
The rest of the planet is dying of hunger and all they know how to do is buy things; and they pretend that the whole rest of the world is like them; it doesn’t cross their minds that it’s possible to live differently from their way of life, which they insist they’ve chosen freely but which is clearly just a state in which they’ve been shipwrecked. And they’ve exported this disaster to the rest of the world, and everywhere they go everything has been left in ruins. And everyone who travels there from the most remote corners of the world, dazzled by the counterfeit shimmer they can make out from a distance, arrive finally at what they believed was an inexhaustible well of happiness but quickly discover its mistrust, its rejection, its exclusion. But I’m repeating myself, Gutiérrez says with an apologetic smile, unsure how he has once again, for the umpteenth time, punished his friends—Clara, Marcos, and Leonor—with his favorite diatribe, always spoken without hatred or violence or anger, but rather with a sense of irony, or reproach perhaps, as though he would have preferred that the place which, in reality, didn’t offer him such a bad reception, had been more similar to the idealized fantasy that had been constructed for him long before he entered its noisy and colorful aura.
The four of them are sitting in the darkness of the living room, cooled by the floor fan that hums in a corner, sending them, along its semicircular trajectory, periodic bursts of gentle air. On the low table between their chairs, on a metal platter, there’s a pitcher of cold water in which, when they serve themselves, ice cubes clink, along with the four tall glasses that they drank from, and in which there’re still some traces of water. The four of them have a common past that at this distance has become legendary, as if, now unchangeable, it had happened in a different dimension from the one they now occupy, made of space and time, of hesitation and uncertainty. And yet they appear to be seated calmly in their chairs, as if they were lodged in a segment of the eternal. That common past distinguishes them from the others, who wander around the courtyard, seeking a place in the shade, in order to let the wine settle maybe, and to recover from the exhaustion of the lunch and the demands of their digestion; or this is how Gutiérrez imagines it from the cool, dark living room, in any case. His friends, meanwhile, and the lover he had for a few now remote weeks, have in fact listened to him, though they’ve already heard him discuss the same topic many times before, with interest and patience, but also with a degree of skepticism: Marcos, for instance, who is a senator and has traveled widely and is in frequent contact with European parliaments, while he’s not unaware of the brutal contradictions of so-called late capitalism, thinks that many of the social gains made by rich countries wouldn’t be detrimental for the poorer ones. Leonor finds it inexplicable for Willi to find so many faults with a continent that can boast places as picturesque and pleasant as Saint Tropez, Nice, Liguria, and Marbella, with so many magnificent hotels and such impeccable service—anyone who’s seen the dawn in Cadaqués, even though its beaches are small and overcrowded, doesn’t have the right to complain about the European continent. Leonor thinks that Willi is too complicated, and that may have been one of the main reasons why she didn’t leave with him that time, so long ago now. Clara Rosemberg’s skepticism, meanwhile, has a different source than the others’: she gets the feeling that Gutiérrez himself, because of his tone, doesn’t really believe i
n the seriousness of his accusations, or that he considers them of secondary importance, in any case, and that he’d like his listeners to do the same, following rather his irony and his rhetorical distancing. Clara asks herself if his cruel critique of Europeans isn’t actually a subtle gesture of reverence toward his local friends. And, with her vague and enigmatic smile, she gives Gutiérrez a look of acquiescence, whose cause or significance Gutiérrez, somewhat perplexed, is not able to guess at.
Yes, Nula thinks, but I saw them in Rosario, on the sidewalk outside that awful house, with some strange and dubious people, the morning when I passed in a taxi. And, simultaneously, though he didn’t for a second doubt that he’d seen them, he still couldn’t believe it. At times, he was sure that it was them, Lucía silent and sleepy and Riera, as usual, cheerful and animated. Because it was winter, they were dressed warmly, Riera in a black overcoat and Lucía in a fur. The people they were talking to, in a circle, two women and a very young-looking man, were different from them in a way that Nula couldn’t quite define. Later, at other times, it was as if he’d only imagined them, or had seen them in a dream, or had been told about it by someone, or had read about it somewhere. But every time he passed the house, in a taxi or on the bus, and even on foot, during the day, when it seemed empty and closed, he would see them again, sharply, in the icy morning, speaking in a circle with their strange friends, and he would try to block out, without managing to, the intolerable images of what might have happened just before, inside, according to what the friend who’d pointed out the house had told him. And now Riera is saying something about how hard the separation with Lucía was for him, and that for months they’ve been trying to get back together. Yes, but I saw you with her in Rosario, on the sidewalk outside that awful house, Nula thinks again, more as a hurt protest than as an accusation. And he’s about to tell him, to make him remember, to make him know that he knows, but no matter how much he tries to give shape to and pronounce the words that would put his doubt to rest (Riera is incapable of lying), he isn’t able to, though his expression must betray his effort somewhat because Riera interrupts his conjugal disclosures and looks at him quizzically, and when Nula doesn’t catch on, he asks him directly:
—What’s wrong?
—Nothing, Nula says, I was thinking that you and Lucía are a perfect match, and I’m absolutely sure you’ll end up together.
—Seriously? Riera says, his smile full of suggestion, clearly signaling that in the words Nula has just spoken there are numerous, darkly hidden allusions that to him are more amusing than offensive or worrying. And suddenly he stands up and shouts to Diana, who sits several meters behind them, sketching under the umbrella:
—Should we take a swim?
Nula laughs, defeated. He realizes that Riera has wanted to demonstrate to him, through his attitude, not only that his allusions aren’t a threat to him, but that he can do things that are even more disturbing, something which translated into words would look something like, Anyone who would suggest to me that the relationship I have with my wife is perverse should know that I would be more than happy to have one even more so with theirs.
—Sit there for two more minutes without moving from those positions and I’ll accept, Diana says without looking up, because she’s finishing the sketch of them from behind, sitting in their chairs under the pavilion, near the empty table. They freeze for a minute more or less and finally Diana shouts, Done!
She closes the pad and the pencil box and, standing up, heads toward the pavilion.
—Immortalized, she says when she passes them on her way to drop the pad and the pencils in the straw bag. Nula and Riera stand up and start to unbutton their shirts, removing them almost simultaneously, as though they’d been competing to see who could take theirs off first. Riera leaves his on the back of his chair, but Nula folds his carefully and puts it in the bag, where Diana is dropping the leather band that she’s just removed from her wrist. Go ahead, I’ll be right there, Diana says, and Nula understands that, though she already has her bathing suit on, she doesn’t want to undress in front of them. The two men walk toward the pool, and only when she sees them standing with their backs to her, at the edge, looking at the water, does Diana remove her dress and her sneakers and put them in the bag. When she reaches the pool, Riera is already in the water, but Nula has waited for her at the edge. When she sees her arrive, Lucía, who is standing in the shallow end, opens her arms to receive them, shouting, Come in, come in! Diana and Nula dive in to the deep end, and Diana, swimming under water, moves toward Lucía, but by the time she surfaces Lucía’s enthusiasm seems to have vanished. They stand there motionless, without knowing what to say, in the four o’clock sun that projects unstable sparks on the water disturbed by the movement of the bodies that have just dived into it and which continue to move and twist inside it. Lying on his back, Nula observes the completely empty blue sky, almost the same color as the water, possibly a bit lighter due to the intense light of the sun, which, though it’s not visible to him in the portion of sky framed by the courtyard, the trees, and the house, flows ceaselessly in the April afternoon, as hot as any January or February. The serene stillness of the blue sky contrasts with the sparkling undulations of the water, and Nula concentrates on that contrast, telling himself that it only exists within the human incapacity to perceive with only our sight the prevalence of that same agitation in what, because of that same optical illusion, its earlier observers named the firmament.
Sitting up, he sees Riera swimming, with vigorous strokes, toward the women, and, submerging, he does the same, but under water. When he reaches her, he wraps his arms around Diana’s waist and lifts her, as he emerges, his head pressed against her firm, naked back. Diana protests, laughing, shaking her arms and legs, and Nula drops her loudly into the cool water. When his attention returns to his friends, he realizes that Riera and Lucía are kissing and caressing each other openly, intensely, without false modesty, and, at least apparently, with the world around them forgotten.
—A beautiful reconciliation scene, he whispers to Diana, taking the opportunity to nibble softly on her ear. In fact, the caresses to which Riera and Lucía have abandoned themselves have given him a sudden erection, and, trying to calm down, he wonders if that hadn’t been their primary motive. Under the swimming trunks, his penis engorges slightly, but remains a soft thickness that sticks, agreeably, to the skin on the inside of his thigh. If they were alone he’d convince Diana to make love. He’d put it in her right there, in the water; it would be easy to lift her up and make her cross her legs around his back, pull his shorts halfway down his thighs, and, pushing aside the tiny bottoms that Diana has on, when his penis was hard enough, penetrate her. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d done it in the water: they’d done it once in the river, two or three times in the bathtub, even with the discomfort, and one night in a hotel pool in Córdoba. He’d lower her bikini top and suck her tits, harder than Lucía’s despite her two maternities, and better shaped than Virginia’s, whose taste and consistency he still has in his mouth, or rather, which are still so present in his memory than they seem to persist in his senses. Though Diana is next to him and their bodies are almost touching, the scene that he imagines has erased her presence, and while the physical attraction that it evokes is more distant than her real body, it has a mythic perfection, sheltered from all contingency, that magnetizes him, heats him up, and blinds him. He’s become so excited that he submerges himself again in order to see if the cool water will remove that turbulent fantasy, but when he’s under water he can’t resist the temptation to fondle Diana’s buttocks, but then he sees that Lucía and Riera’s hands, under the water, are grabbing each other’s crotches. Curiously, rather than excite him like the apparently passionate caresses to which they’d abandoned themselves did a moment ago, this detail calms him down immediately, as if the sexuality that seemed, as he grew excited, to exist only for himself, concentrating in his body all the desire of the universe, was now reveal
ing its pedestrian vulgarity in showing that it was shared by others. He will have to live through more experiences in order to understand that it’s the desire of the other and not our own that creates pleasure, and though he doesn’t yet know this, he still hasn’t reached full adulthood.
—We have to separate tonight; I—persona non grata at my mother-in-law’s—am staying at a hotel, Riera says, as though in apology, but they remain intertwined, their arms around each other’s waists and their free hands submerged.
—Legally you continue to be husband and wife, Nula says. You have every right.
—Of course, Diana says. And even if you weren’t.
Gutiérrez, in a white undershirt, shorts, and sandals, appears suddenly at the edge of the pool.
—The younger generations seem to understand each other well, he says affably. You’re not plotting against you elders, I hope.
But there’s a hint of doubt in his words. Nula thinks that the familiarity among the bathers, who only met this morning, doesn’t quite make sense to him. Actually, Nula doesn’t know if Gutiérrez’s confusion is real, or if he, who has at his disposal every element of the situation, is projecting ideas onto him. Lucía stares at the surface of the water with a conventional smile, but Riera and Diana exchange pleasant looks with the owner of the house, who, seen from below, is amplified by the perspective, and he offers the four of them a welcoming expression that contains more than a poolside afternoon cookout in the country. Nula believes—hopes—that Gutiérrez is able to understand everything, and though it was Lucía and not himself who on Tuesday night said that they didn’t know each other, he feels guilty about what happened. With him, the lie seems more absurd and superfluous than immoral.
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