Scars - Juan José Saer

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deception, and in the end he was just an easily influenced person. What was more apparent, according to Barco, was his masochism, and Shakespeare’s vulgar construction of a tragedy based on the stereotypical idea that all Arabs are jealous and impulsive. From that he starting talking about how the phlegmatism of the English was a product of the intense humidity. Tomatis laughed at Barco’s arguments but admitted that Othello wasn’t a jealous man, agreeing that it was obvious Othello wasn’t jealous because his behavior wasn’t typical for a jealous man, since it’s common knowledge that jealous men don’t beat to death the women who have betrayed them, but rather they dedicate themselves to calculating the dimensions of their banana plantations and examining the path of the shadow cast by the last column in the southeast corridor of their guest house. It’s elementary, Tomatis shouted, punching the table. No jealous man beats his wife to death. That’s cheap psychology. A real jealous man is a maniac for details. And the one time in my life I felt real jealousy, I had the irresistible urge to find a carpenter’s rule and go take the measurements of the queen-size bed where I suspected the deception was being perpetrated.

      In my opinion, Tomatis was exaggerating, but the theory was original. Barco responded that it would have been better to use the carpenter’s rule to measure the object for which Tomatis has been substituted. If you have to unfold it the full meter to measure it, he said, then you’ve found the reason for the deception. Then they stopped yelling and it was silent for more than five minutes, and I spent the whole time hitting the edge of my plate with my spoon. When the silence started to bother me, I got up and went to take a piss. I crossed a tiled courtyard that led to a yard full of bare trees—behind their branches I saw a whole lot of clouds moving quickly, opening up for the glow of the moon and a section of starlit sky. But there was no wind in the courtyard, and the black, naked branches stayed motionless. I didn’t even reach the bathroom. I pissed in the courtyard, standing on the strip of concrete between the red tiles and the dirt. When I got back to the kitchen, it felt like they had been talking about me because I noticed something suspicious in the silence, different from what I had left earlier.

      —I was changing the olive water, I said when I came in and noticed the silence. Tomatis asked me to go to the front room and get a pack of cigarettes from the desk drawer. I went and opened the drawer and saw there were two packs of North American cigarettes. I pocketed one pack and took the other to Tomatis. When I gave it to him, Tomatis opened it and offered one to everyone, me included. I bit the filter and lit it, blowing a mouthful of smoke over the table. I raised my head and squinted my eyes, the filter stuck tight between my teeth.

      Then we all moved to the front room. Gloria and Barco threw themselves on the sofa bed, head-to-toe, and every so often Barco would tell her to get her feet off his face. Nicolás grabbed the edge of a chair and sat there like a corpse, not opening his mouth or even breathing probably. I was about to sit down on the edge of the desk again, but Tomatis stopped me, saying, I don’t like visitors putting their ass where I work, so I sat in a chair and Tomatis leaned up against his book case. La Negra and Pupé sat in two armchairs. Pupé didn’t even bother trying to cover her legs, while la Negra spent the whole time pulling her skirt down over her knees, and my suspicion that she was hairier than a chimp grew stronger each time. Gloria complained over and over that Barco wasn’t giving her any space on the bed and she could fall off any second. Tomatis said that in the hotel where he stayed in Buenos Aires there was a maid so tall that she couldn’t get in the elevator, and once when he was going down to the front desk (because the only time I left the room I went to the front desk to ask them to fix the phone because it was busted, he said) the elevator opened and there she was, crouched in one of the corners. I asked the concierge if it wasn’t disruptive to have such a tall maid, Tomatis said, but the guy said she did a great job cleaning the ceilings and was in bed with the owner, who was crazy for tall women. Pupé asked if he was writing anything, and Tomatis nodded several times, squinting his eyes, and said, Yes, I’m writing something. Pupé asked him what. I’m not sure yet, said Tomatis, I’ve only written about three hundred pages. Pupé asked, But is it a novel or what? And Tomatis said, There’s only one genre—the novel. It took years to discover this. There’s only three things in literature: perception, language, and form. Literature gives form, through language, to specific perceptions. And that’s it. The only possible form is narration, because the substance of perception is time. I applauded. Pupé shook her head two or three times, and Nicolás opened his mouth for the second time all night. According to Valéry, he said, for certain internal states, discourse and dialectics should be reinforced by narration and description. Tomatis said, Exactly—he says this in reference to Swedenborg and the mystic state. Which provides us with a wider field for narration. And further, if the mystic state, the state of ecstasy par excellence, is subject to narration and description, then what happens with fleeting moments of consciousness and jolts to the senses? When discourse and dialectics are no longer scientific or philosophical truths, they transform into a narrative of the error and the perspective of the consciousness that imagined them.

      I applauded again. With Nicolás, I was even more convinced that he was some kind of life-size, plastic robot, built by Tomatis to say, Dinner is served, and interject the Valéry quote in the conversation to support his argument.

      Finally Barco managed to throw Gloria off the bed, and she got back up and sat on the edge, next to Barco, and started slapping him softly in the face. Her long neck was tilted toward Barco, and when she moved her head her ponytail swung crazily over her shoulders. I realized she was the most complete woman of the three there. I couldn’t forget Tomatis’s warning about Pupé, and with la Negra the idea of going to bed in the dark with a hairy monkey made me shudder with terror. Gloria’s tight pants framed an ass that was madman, and when I saw she was letting Barco move his hands complacently along her thighs and back and all that, I realized that any second I was going to end up with a hard-on. I go nuts when I see a woman in pants. A million naked women radiating a blue iridescence could walk past me and I would hesitate about which one to choose at first, but if in that million one comes along in pants, I’m likely to drop on her like a lightning bolt. Gloria was lifting Barco’s head and feeding him whiskey in short sips, then she would drink. In an hour not a drop was left of the two bottles. Suddenly Barco got up and said he was leaving. Tomatis didn’t even say goodbye. I don’t think they exchanged a single word all night, and as far as I know they’ve seen each other every single day since they were born. La Negra asked if he was going to the city center, and Barco said he was, so she asked him to wait. She went to the back of the house, to take a piss I assume, and then put on the white trench that fit her so well, and probably worked to camouflage that black tangle of monkey hair that I’m sure covered her entire body. Nicolás, said Tomatis. They’re going downtown. They’ll get you close to the bus stop at least, because it’s already twelve thirty. Tomorrow’s May first and later tonight it’ll be hard to find transportation. Nicolás got up, grabbed his raincoat, folded it over his arm, and left with Barco and la Negra.

      When it was just the four of us, I threw myself on the bed, hoping Gloria would come pour whiskey in my mouth, but she stayed put in the chair la Negra had been in, listening to Tomatis tell the story of the producer and the director and the blonde in the hotel in Buenos Aires. If I heard right, in the latest version there were now two blondes, identical twins who walked naked around the hotel room while he and the two movie guys tried to write dialogue. Suddenly, Gloria was asleep. Tomatis and Pupé had been talking in low voices for at least ten minutes, I’m not sure about what, then they got up and went to the back of the house. I fell asleep, for about ten minutes. When I opened my eyes I saw Gloria kneeling next to the sofa, looking at me intently. Tomatis and Pupé still hadn’t come back.

      —I was looking at you, Gloria said.

      I sat up.

      —You looked dead, Gloria said.

      She had a thin, freckled face. She was thin all over, trim, except that sensational ass. Her hair was pulled tight around her head. I could see a mole on her left cheek.

      —Well, I’m back, I said.

      I sat up on the edge of the bed.

      —I’m gonna go change the olive

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