Juan José Saer - La Grande

— El Bebe, Nula says, smiling softly and shaking his head theatrically.

— He’s a shark for business, apparently, La India says.

— It wouldn’t surprise me, Nula says.

It was already after twelve, but La India, comfortable in her chair behind her desk and in her conversation with Nula, hadn’t yet decided to close the store. Her two employees — although she isn’t a rabid feminist, La India prefers, on principle, to give priority to hiring women — have already left for lunch. The extraordinarily bright April morning is visible in the street, through the window, and the light reflects, on the opposite sidewalk, off the side of the courthouse building. There’s not a single cloud in the sky. As he left his house, around ten, to visit a client at the other end of the city, in Guadalupe, before coming to the bookstore, Nula stood for a moment, measuring the temperature, and finally decided to go back inside and change, leaving behind the jacket and putting on lighter pants than he’d worn the day before. When he saw the cloudless sky, a vivid memory returned of the static, massive, white clouds that he’d seen the day before on his way to Rincón to deliver Gutiérrez’s wine order so that the bottles could rest a while in case he decided to serve them on Sunday; he’d run into Soldi and Gabriela just as he was turning off the pavement onto the sandy road, and had talked with them a while, but when he arrived at Gutiérrez’s the woman who took care of the house told him that he’d gone for a walk in the countryside, and so he unloaded the wine, walked a while along the street, with no apparent goal, and then returned to the city. This morning, on his way to Guadalupe, in the porous and radiant ten o’clock light, he thought he could perceive the probably fleeting return of summer. It was still early when he finished with the client, so he’d decided to have a cup of coffee at the pastry shop on the lagoon, which, before one of the recent floods inundated the beach forever, when it was still crowded with people, had once been a fashionable place. He watched the water in the lagoon form ripples, still a milky beige, and in the silence of the bar, in which he’s the only customer and from which even the waiter has disappeared, into the back rooms or the rear courtyard, he’d started to think about Lucía, but also about Diana, with a remote sense of anguish, like a soldier returning from a pointless war. The sun, high at this point, rising, almost in front of him, from the east, warmed his face and covered the water, the distant vegetation on the opposite shore, the empty sky, with a golden shimmer. A few drops of sweat dampened his forehead and his upper lip, and his freshly shaved cheeks burned slightly. When he walked into the bookstore, La India looked at him a moment, and as he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, asked him, in a low voice so that the employees, who were still in the office, wouldn’t hear:

— What’s wrong?

Nula took his time before answering. He walked back around the desk and sat down opposite her.

— My mother doesn’t love me, he said, smiling.

— He who lives most, loves most, a lie , La India quotes, and taking, as usual, Nula’s appeal for affection (believing he needs the protection less than her eldest son), like the whim of a cynical fin de siècle dandy , as she’d once described him, in love with her verbal invention, and repeating it often, makes the gesture of symbolically washing her hands of him and goes on to tell him about the call she got from El Bebe.

Law textbooks are stacked on the shelves, on the edges of the desk, on a table, and on the floor, in neat piles, or carefully displayed in cases or in unopened packages, or otherwise recently packaged, prepared to be sent to customers in towns or cities close to the capital. At random, Nula reads, silently, disinterestedly, the titles on the covers and the spines: A Treatise on the Law of Promissory Notes and Bills of Exchange, Handbook of the Argentine Constitution, Notarial Practice, International Public Law, Annotated Civil Code, National Law of Administrative Procedure, Civil and Commercial Prosecutorial Code of the Province . Shaking his head and sighing, Nula asks:

— Is Calcagno’s Roman Law Course still sold?

— There are more current books, but it’s still a reference. It’s in every bibliography, La India says. Why?

— What made you want to sell such boring books? Nula says, as though he hadn’t heard the question, and the moment the words are out, although he’s looked away and therefore can’t see the look of displeasure on La India’s face, he knows that he’s just added cruelty to what was already a blunder. But when he meets La India’s eyes he sees only a vague, mocking irony, as though his mother hadn’t heard a thing. The brutal question that, without knowing why, takes shape in his mind every so often, but which never surfaces, nor in all likelihood will ever reach his lips, now occupies the bright space of his mind, tantalizing and insistent: What if it were us, his wife and his sons, who he was actually fed up with, and a heroic sacrifice was just a pretext for starting his successive escapes, first to politics, then to the underground, and finally to death? But instead of formulating it, despite its peremptory insistence — he loves La India too much to allow himself anything more than the occasional minor blunder — he smiles and thinks again that, ever since he arrived at the bookstore, first with the memory of the cornfield and now with the question that sometimes rises from the blackness, tantalizing, insistently, in his conscience, his frontal bone has intercepted the width of the desk, the bright and calm space that separates him from his mother, taking, behind his forehead, the empirically measurable distance and multiplying it by infinity. Finally consenting to answer La India’s question, in the most cheerful tone he can muster, he says:

— No reason. We sold it a lot at the kiosk. All I know about Roman law is the famous precept: Mater certa, pater semper incertus , and along with a deliberately atrocious pronunciation of the Latin phrase, Nula shakes his extended index finger in the air, threateningly and apodictically.

— The constant specter of masculinity, La India says as she checks her watch.

— Oh, don’t let me keep you; I’ll get up and leave right now, Nula says, obviously parodying an offended tone.

— On the contrary, La India says. This is the happiest moment of my life. After this I’m retiring to a convent to reflect upon the blessing of having you as a son. But I thought you had a meeting at twelve thirty. Don’t forget that they’re my clients too and I don’t want you to spoil them for me.

— My mother does love me, Nula says, and, looking at his watch, announces, But there’s still fifteen minutes left and it’s right next door.

It’s true. La India had recommended some friends of hers, lawyers, cops, judges, and since it’s Friday and the courthouse closes for the weekend at noon, five of them had organized a group purchase at the law school, which is just a few meters away, on the same block as the bookstore. Nula expects to make a good sale — afterward, he plans to return home (maybe take some sun, which seems to be as hot as in November) before going back out, to the supercenter , where the Amigos del Vino promotional stand is set to open.

— Mami, Nula says. On Sunday, Diana and I have a cookout in Rincón. Would you be able to tolerate your grandchildren for a whole day?

— Of course I would, La India says. It’ll be nice to interact with people somewhat more mature than my own children.

— I assume you’re not referring to me, Nula says, and standing up and walking around the desk, he leans toward her and kisses her forehead. You’re amazing, India, he says, and picks up his briefcase and turns toward the door.