Juan José Saer - La Grande

Chacho, passing the flashlight beam quickly over the roof and white facade of the ranch, says, That’s my house , and turns back toward the river.

A cluster of young acacias struggle near the riverbank.

— Watch your step, the water’s up, Chacho says, and he stops so suddenly that Nula and Gutiérrez, pressed together under the umbrella and colliding as they brake, almost run him over. He passes the bright beam over the trees, the earth, the bank, the water, and eventually the light collides, somewhat weakly, against the vegetation on an island across the river. As the light beam retraces the same path, in reverse, Nula is able to make out, on the surface of the river, the parallel waves pocked with rainfall and formed by opposite forces, the downstream current and the wind from the southeast, apparently the same ones they saw upriver earlier that day, and whether they’re the same waves or identical waves it’s difficult to know, because the law of becoming, manifested here as false repetition, constructs its shabby platform of permanence right in the eye of the whirlwind.

A red canoe, shining in the rain, rocks gently among the reeds. Three damp ropes, tied to the trunk of a tree, extend from the water’s edge. Chacho studies them a moment and then, crouching, grabs one of the three, lifts it slightly, and starts to haul it in, energetically but carefully. Then he turns around and extends the flashlight to Nula.

— Shine it here, please, he orders politely. Obligingly, Gutiérrez raises the umbrella slightly, not enough to cover the other two, and Nula, with a hint of treachery, thinks he must want to play a part in the scene — singular, at least to men from the city — that is developing in the rainy darkness. Pulling up on the rope, slowly, carefully, Chacho takes out a wooden cage built from a wine case, its interior compartments disassembled and a few panels added to the outside to cover the openings without closing them off completely, allowing the cage to fill with water when it’s submerged.

— Shine it here, Chacho repeats, brusquely, and, releasing a few hooks, opens the lid. Nula points the flashlight at the opening, and the white circle shines into the bottom of the cage. Two gleaming, silver fish with long whiskers and trembling dorsal fins twist desperately inside, and, lunging spastically, they collide and crash against the walls of the cage. With a single, deft movement, Chacho, who, in his burlap cloak, looks like a priest at some ancient ritual, grabs one of the fish by the middle, near the dorsal fin, and without straightening up, moves it slightly away from the cage into the flashlight beam, flips it belly-up, and splits it with a single incision, liberating it, Nula thinks, from the spasm of agony that still convulses the other, removing it forever from its strange fishy universe, as incomprehensible to the fish as to the three men standing overhead, a universe that, as cruel and adverse as it might seem, has yet to be seized from his associate struggling at the bottom of the cage. After splitting the fish, Chacho drops the knife on the ground, inserts his free hand into the open belly, and, in one tug, yanks out its guts and throws them into the river, causing, as they hit the water, a sudden upheaval, a noisy and violent tremor, as other, hungry fish struggle over the unexpected offering. Chacho places the dead fish on the ground, picks up the knife, and, with the same quickness, carries out the same operation on the second fish. Then he carries both fish to the water and washes them in the river, and then his hands, and finally, standing up and taking from his pocket a wrinkled plastic bag emblazoned with a green W from the hypermarket, drops the two fish inside and extends the bag to Gutiérrez.

— Here, he says.

Nula follows their movements with the white flashlight beam, but because 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.