Juan José Saer - La Grande

What he remembers: the morning when, coming out of the Siete Colores, he bumped into her and started following her; the incredible coincidence that Lucía walked up to his own house; the mysterious circuit around the block that she made, stopping and examining, with different attitudes, the houses on the four symmetrical points on each of the four streets that formed the block; how he found her for a second time one afternoon at the neighborhood pastry shop and sat down next to her, and how she invited him on a walk and without dissimulating had followed the same route as the time before, stopping at the entrance to Nula’s house, at the house around the corner, which was Riera’s office, on the cross street around the corner from the office, and finally at the house parallel to the office, which was her own. Nula tells Diana that he was so fascinated by Lucía that, without knowing why, he’d made the same circuit that same night, but in the opposite direction, and even rang the bell at the house on the cross street, and that a boy answered, that afterward he’d passed by Doctor Riera’s office, where by that time everything was dark, had peered in, and then had turned the last corner and went inside his own house. He tells her that the next day he went to the office pretending to be sick and had met Doctor Riera for the first time, that Riera had examined him, but that he’d refused to charge him for the visit, but a while later, that same afternoon, on his way home from doing some lunch shopping for La India he’d seen Riera get out of a double-parked car, cross the sidewalk, and stop at the entrance to the apartments where he and La India lived; Nula had stopped and waited and when he saw him get back in the car and turn the corner slowly he kept walking all the way to the ice cream shop, just in time to see Riera jump out of the car, cross the sidewalk, and enter his office, and so he’d taken the opportunity to walk down the street, noticing when he passed it that Riera’s car was still running, and when he reached the next corner had crossed the street and waited there; from where he was standing he could see both streets, the one with the office, where the car had now started to move slowly, and the other one, perpendicular to it, where the mysterious house sat, and where Riera stopped the car, double parked again (his typical method, apparently), crossed the sidewalk, and rang the bell; almost immediately the door opened a crack and Riera carried on an animated conversation with someone inside, invisible to Nula from where he was standing, then reached in, and finally went back to his car, almost at a run, as the slightly open door closed behind him; and Nula followed him (his own typical method, apparently) — Diana laughs somewhat more loudly when he says this — seeing that, as he’d expected, Riera finished the ritual circuit at the front door to his own house.

He would eventually learn that there was nothing strange about any of it, but before this something happened that was so incredible, so dark and singular and at the same time so humiliating and absurd to him, that in the three months that the relationship between the three of them lasted he interpreted it countless different ways, and when he finally thought he’d found the correct one he stopped seeing them, thinking that he’d be able to stop his suffering, though a couple of months later he’d seen them by chance one morning in Rosario, outside a house that, according to a friend of his, had an abominable reputation, and because knowing this had increased his suffering he’d decided never to see them again; and, eventually, he met Diana, and, as he later learned, Riera and Lucía had moved to Bahía Blanca.

And he tells her: a couple of weeks after she met him, Lucía invited him to her house for the first time, to have a tea, at six. Nula had arrived at six on the dot, his temples throbbing intensely and his hands shaking, bringing with him a small package of delicate pastries and the resignation that he’d have to drink a couple of cups of tea, which he detested. But Lucía hadn’t prepared tea or anything, and, apparently distracted, seemed indifferent to his visit. When she asked him in, she looked at her watch and compared it to the clock on the wall, checking that she had the exact time. Not only did she not prepare tea, but she didn’t offer him anything else; she threw the package he’d brought in the fridge without opening it or making a point to offer him any of the pastries. They sat down on a couch, and Nula, as he would every time they were alone, on dark streets especially, pressed himself close and tried to kiss her. Lucía resisted a little, but not as strongly as she would when they were in the street. He caressed her over her clothes and she let him do it, without returning the caresses. If she’d asked him to stop he would’ve obeyed, because he loved her a lot; he’d never loved anyone up till that moment the way he loved her, feeling, with an almost adolescent innocence, the most irreconcilable contradictions, like thinking she was both attractive and unattainable, pure and lascivious, maternal and whorish. Much later, he realized those painful contradictions had a romantic quality: according to a theory he was developing, which argued that each stage or station in life corresponds to a specific philosophical or literary movement; thus, for instance, romanticism predominates in the adolescent; you’re a Hegelian when you join a political party; a Pre-Socratic in childhood; an Empiricist in your infancy; a Skeptic in your later years; a Stoic at work; and so on, and so on. Falling in love with a married older woman was without a doubt the apotheosis of romanticism, and though (to follow the literary thread) it would be necessary to be Platonic if she forced the issue, it seemed impossible to Nula not to go on, a completely erroneous assumption on his part given that she was clearly letting him do whatever he wanted despite not returning his caresses with the same enthusiasm, and so despite her relative impassivity he explored deeper and deeper into her intimate territory: he unbuttoned her blouse, put his hand in her bra, between her warm, constricted breasts; he kissed her on her neck, on her ear, on her shoulder, while he took off her shirt and unbuttoned her bra, pulling it away, so that she was left naked from the waist up. It was already October, and it was hot. As he kissed and caressed Lucía’s warm, damp skin with one hand he started to unbutton his shirt with the other, twisting it off, and standing up, pulled Lucía with him, pressing himself against her and taking off her skirt, which had a small clasp and a zipper down the side. Nula unhooked it and pulled the zipper down and the skirt fell around Lucía’s ankles. Moving her feet slowly and clumsily, letting Nula, who was pressed hard against her, kiss her continuously, Lucía, helping with the heels of her shoes, removed the last of the skirt, but when he tried to take off her panties she rejected him forcefully and then violently when he tried again. They sat back down on the couch and Nula forced her to stretch out, and when she was lying down, face up, he got naked and threw himself on top of her but she shook him off and changed position, turning onto her side. They were lying there naked — she with only her shoes and panties on, he with nothing on — but every time Nula tried to pull down her panties she rejected him, although when he grabbed her hand and guided it to his penis so she’d rub it, Lucía grabbed it without the slightest hesitation and instead of caressing it squeezed it and released it, squeezed it and released it, and eventually just held it in her hand, motionless. They were lying there, sideways, face to face, on the couch, him naked like he’d just emerged from his mother’s womb and her in her panties and high-heeled shoes, allowing Nula to caress her and squeezing his penis in her hand, when the door opened and Riera walked in.