La Grande. Juan José Saer

took a table in the courtyard. Moro sat thinking for a moment. He was just over forty, already pretty bald and with a bit of a paunch, well-dressed and friendly, a spontaneous sort of friendliness that had nothing to do with his business, but which actually came from his private life, because in fact he’d inherited the estate agency, a flourishing family business started by his grandfather and established in the area for over seventy years, meaning that, not having any financial problems of his own, he could lend a personal turn to business matters, reflecting in a disinterested way about people and what they did. There wasn’t a block in the city, or in the neighboring smaller cities and towns, or likewise in the surrounding countryside, where you wouldn’t find the proverbial signboard: ANOTHER (in red letters printed at an angle in the upper left corner of the white rectangle), in the center in larger, black letters MORO PROPERTY, and below that, in red letters again, FOR RENT (or FOR SALE). And so whenever Nula would deliver his wine, the visits would last somewhat longer than with his other clients, although the sale of wine, because of the literary aura that surrounds the product, always overflows, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the person, into the private sphere. Nula was surprised to see him fall into such an introspective moment; from his expression, Nula could tell that he was trying to get his head around some unusual thought, something that he found difficult to put into words. Then he said, While I was following him, I had this weird feeling I’ve never had before, and which, no lie, really bothered me. It was like we were walking down the same street, in the same place, but in different times. It occurred to me that if I walked up and said hello he wouldn’t recognize me despite having spent the whole morning together, or worse yet he wouldn’t even see me because we were moving through different dimensions, like in some sci-fi program.

      The day after his walk along the coast with Gutiérrez, Nula will see Tomatis at the southern end of the city, around six in the afternoon, behind the capitol building, and, stopping his car, will invite him in. I accept, Tomatis will say. I’m waiting for the bus, but one that’s full enough hasn’t come along yet. After exchanging some pleasantries, they’ll end up talking about Gutiérrez, whose return to the city has, in fact, ended up causing something of a stir. Tomatis will tell him that, through his sister, he knows the couple—Amalia and Faustino—who work for Gutiérrez. The wife takes care of the house, the shopping, and the meals, and the husband the courtyard, the landscaping, the pavilion, the pool, and the garden. His sister relays the gossip from another woman, a sister-in-law of the first, who comes two or three times a week to help out around the house. Little things, purely circumstantial details (the couple is too earnest, according to Tomatis, to commit any sort of indiscretion) that Tomatis nevertheless interprets methodically and thus forms a general picture of the situation. What I remember from thirty-some years back is that Gutiérrez left the city suddenly, that he stayed in Buenos Aires for a year, and that in the end the earth swallowed him whole. With other people who’d gone to Europe, to the States, to Cuba, to Israel, or even to India, we heard reports every so often, but with him nothing, not a single thing. It was like he’d died, gone missing, disintegrated, evaporated, or dissolved into the impenetrable, innumerable world. Although . . . now that I think about it . . . hold on, let’s see . . . yeah, one night, many years later, in Paris, Pichón took me to a party where I met this Italian girl who, when she heard where we came from, Pichón and I, told me she knew a Gutiérrez who was from the same city and who lived between Italy and Switzerland and wrote screenplays under a pseudonym. His name was Guillermo Gutiérrez, but she didn’t know what pseudonym he used for the screenplays. I’d forgotten that detail almost as soon as I heard it, and now, suddenly, it came back to me. Actually, the Italian girl was wrong, Gutiérrez wasn’t from the city. He came from someplace north of Tostado called El Nochero. His grandmother, who was dirt poor, had saved up some money with the help of the church to send him to school in the city. He went to a Catholic high school, and, the moment he graduated, his grandmother died—it was like she’d been staying alive just to make sure her grandson was on the right track. He enrolled at the law school, where he met Escalante, Marcos Rosemberg, and César Rey, and they became inseparable. The four of them formed a sort of political-literary avant-garde that didn’t last long—besides their youth and their friendship they didn’t have anything in common, not even politics or literature. Since he didn’t have a penny, unlike the other three, who despite being older still had school paid for by their families, Gutiérrez started working, a little bit of everything, until his Roman Law professor, who liked him, took him on as a clerk in his office, where he was partners with Doctor Mario Brando, a poet and head of the precisionist movement, as far as I know the most hateful fraud ever produced by the literary circles in this fucking city. But on that count I suggest you consult with Soldi and Gabriela Barco, who are researching a history of the avant-garde in the province. I’ll get off at the corner. Thanks for the ride. And Nula will answer, Not a problem. But what was it you were telling me about the couple that works for him? And Tomatis, with a studied gesture of indifference, will downplay its importance, while letting slip—unintentionally, of course—two or three melodramatic and mysterious little details: This and that. Nothing really important. But if push came to shove I believe we’d find that those two, although they haven’t known him long, would sacrifice their lives for their new boss. And then, before getting out, he’ll discuss the weather and other mundane things.

      But Tomatis will only tell him these things tomorrow, at around the same time, after another cloudy day that, as it ends, will nonetheless allow fragments of pale blue, faintly red from the last rays of an already disappeared sun, though still clean and luminous, to shine through the breaks in the gray clouds that high winds will begin to disperse. For now, though, as he takes a cigarette from the pack and brings it to his lips, the air and the rippled surface of the river, both an even, leaden gray from the double effect of the dusk and the increasingly low, dark clouds, remain in shadow. Two meters away, Gutiérrez, his silhouette sharply outlined against the darkness, over which his bright yellow waterproof jacket glows with an attenuated splendor, seems absorbed by an intense memory or thought, so much so that his arms, separated slightly from his body, have stopped in the middle of a forgotten movement. Less than a minute has passed since they stopped at the edge of the water, but because they’ve been silent, separated from each other by their thoughts, time appears to have stretched out, seeming to pass not only on the horizontal plane that their instincts recognize, but also on a vertical one, to an inconceivable depth, suggesting that even the present, despite its familiar brevity, and even along its unstable, gossamer border, might actually be infinite. Gutiérrez, apparently remembering that Nula is with him, returns to his open, slightly urbane manner, and smiles.

      —I was time traveling, he says.

      —And I was riding the present, trying not get bucked off that wild bronco, Nula says.

      —Which luckily can sometimes be a gentle mare, says Gutiérrez.

      —If we keep developing the metaphor, we’re going to end up in the zoo.

      —Screenwriters are contractually obligated to use the primary local material. In London, it’s always got to be cloudy, and don’t dare forget to fill the Sahara with camels, says Gutiérrez, a quick spark of retrospective disdain in his eyes. And, bringing his hand to his forehead, he rubs at something as he raises his head and looks up at the sky. A drop, he says.

      —Two, Nula says, touching his nose while scrutinizing the dark clouds. Looking back down and around himself, he thinks of his red camper, his white pullover, his new shirt, his freshly ironed pants. He looks at his loafers, where a rim of yellow mud has formed along the entire perimeter of their soles and a few stains of the same yellowish substance have stuck to their insteps, and he makes two or three involuntary gestures, at once ambiguous and contradictory.

      Gutiérrez watches him openly, laughing, as if his misfortune amused him, and then, deliberately reaching slowly into an interior pocket of his raincoat, the wide and open kind, like a marsupial pouch, that some of those coats have, he withdraws an umbrella with a short handle, where he presses a metal button, and the canopy of smooth and glowing fabric divided into seven different colored sections unfolds with a sharp sound, sudden and exact, and a perfection that approaches the theatrical. The sections of the canopy represent the color spectrum, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, with identical segments, and the composite of the two men and