La Grande - Juan José Saer

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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

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