Juan José Saer - La Grande

After shaving for the second time that day, Nula’s mind, clouded by the sun, awakens under a warm shower, where he remains a long time, and before stepping out he finishes with a thick burst of cold water; his muscles tense up, and as he dries himself, he feels energetic, compact, hard, and he rubs his body vigorously, opening the bathroom door and causing the steam from the warm shower, which fogs the mirror, to dissipate. It’s somewhat cooler outside the bathroom, so he walks to the bedroom, naked, to dress, constantly rubbing his body with the towel to dry the wetness, which he can no longer distinguish as water or sweat. In the bedroom, which, in darkness, is actually cold, he senses, with pleasure, that his skin is drying, and after rubbing deodorant on his armpits he starts to get dressed with the kind of special attention that has nothing to do with the inauguration of the promotion for Amigos del Vino but rather with the expectation of another kind that the night has in store for him. He puts on a lightweight tan suit over a cream-colored short-sleeve polo shirt, without a tie, and a pair of shiny brown loafers, without socks. The local criteria for elegance, more or less valid for the previous forty years, and suited to a middle class man whose work does not preclude him from certain touches of bohemia, which includes the selective commerce of wine and other gastronomical products, are followed scrupulously by Nula, but his age, twenty-nine, the last symbolic barrier from entering the adult world forever, allows him certain touches of studied negligence, exhibited to the world in general, but especially for certain people, at night, and in secret. When he’s ready he picks up his keys, his pen, his wallet and credit cards, a few coins from the night stand, his cell phone, his notebook, and a clean handkerchief that he puts in the right rear pocket of his pants, and turning toward his desk he switches the computer on, looking for the lines by Omar Kayyám that, last night, after he and Diana got back from the Amigos del Vino bar, where they were having drinks with Gabriela Barco, Tomatis, Soldi, and Violeta, and, around midnight, after taking home the girl who’d stayed late to watch the kids, he’d finished polishing and typing out on the computer, expurgated of all allusions contrary to the aseptic postulates of publicity technique, of marketing strategy, and of the porous and drowsy understanding of the consumers. If the ideas on this topic, which he’s been turning over in his head for a long time, could be expressed in a more or less organized way, they would develop as follows: Inebriation, the primary function of wine consumption, cannot be mentioned, though by definition it’s the very reason for its existence; and inebriation begins with the first glass, which means that only a hypocrite could pretend that drinking in moderation is possible. The feeling produced by the first sip of wine and the ultimate drunken black-out are only separated by degrees. After the first glass, the other, an other — the otherness — that we’re seeking begins to bloom from within the only place where it could rationally be found, that is to say, within ourselves. Wine transforms both the drinker and the world around him. The sensorial shift provokes a momentary forgetting of the abyss, allowing, almost immediately, joy, wit, and energy to take its place; it doesn’t matter that later, with the second or third bottle, distress, anguish, confusion, and fury return, taking possession of the body and the mind. Inebriation is an easy gift: the ability to finally be oneself. Sobriety expels us from our true inner life, and inebriation restores it to us. That is the only purpose of wine, and because of this alcohol is sacred in every civilization but ours, where, like everything else, it’s been transformed into merchandise. It must have something to do with Christianity, because in The Thousand and One Nights the wine sellers are always Christian. Rather than attempt to excise inebriation from the consumption of wine, it’s necessary to admit that in fact inebriation without wine also exists, and that seeking it through wine constitutes a search for the self, which sobriety, in general, refuses. It stands to reason that in order not to find one’s self it’s necessary to practice a ritualized sobriety. Natural inebriation, without the aid of toxins like wine or other drugs is also looked down upon. Insanity, for instance, can be considered a kind of inebriation caused by a combination of internal and external agents. Mysticism is another: that’s why the mystics, drunk on divinity, are shunned by every religion. But there’s a passing, non-toxic inebriation that can suddenly assault the individual, allowing an internal transformation and, for a few moments, an inward sight along with a different vision of the world that is estranged, in transition, where the banal is exalted, the familiar is uncanny, and the unknown, familiar. That autonomous inebriation, which can cause exaltation or panic, puts one into contact with the otherness sought through wine, and is therefore as suspect as the other, which wine produces. The earnest search for that otherness from the self, which is within the self, and within the world, can be considered an exercise in practical metaphysics. And the contact with that otherness, exultant or painful, like a passing mystical experience, shouldn’t be worried over . Nula takes the notebook from his pocket, opens it on the desk, and, with a black pen removed from a jar, after drawing a line, a squiggle, and then another line in order to separate the new note from the previous one, thinks for a few seconds and then writes: A dialectical materialism conceived from multiple and contradictory viewpoints, in a single individual or in several: the otherness of the self, like the front and back of a thin disc, which, when spun, reverses front and back, each occupying the place of the other. One transforming, continuously, into the other . But as he writes he’s assaulted by a doubt: what if his fear of having been betrayed by Lucía is what’s inspired his revenge on the ridiculous conspiracy that adjudicates Riera and Lucía. He leaves the pen in the jar, closes the notebook, puts it in the inside pocket of his coat, and, after picking up the briefcase, passing through the bedroom to take one last look at himself in the mirror, he turns off the light and, crossing the living room and the cool, shaded front hall, opens the door and goes out onto the bright sidewalk.

Over the past two days the city has returned to a summer that, judging by the increasing heat, would naturally be called intense and, for the same reason, temporary. The rain earlier that week, on top of the humidity it brought with it, had given renewed life to the vegetation: first the water had cleansed the foliage, and then, penetrating the earth over two consecutive and almost full days and nights, had helped the sap to feed the branches, rising and extending to each leafy tip, to every tiny filament at the farthest ends from the trunk, and as a result of this secret, periodic trajectory between the earth and the water, the light and the air, appeared, in passing, traces of reddish or tender green buds, little flowers opened temporarily, and branches loaded, once again, with new, firm, and very green leaves. Even the people on the street have let themselves be conquered by this extension of the summer, and the deserted streets reveal that the sense to not be seen on the street until at least after six, when the sun begins to fall, is now intrinsic to the city’s inhabitants, always alert, though the summer may have passed, to the menace of the heat. Everyone who’s braved the outdoors, at least in the streets far from the city center, now walks on the western sidewalk, in the shade, and if they’re forced to cross they do so at the very last moment, risking as little time in the sun as possible. As he pulls out, the air conditioning starts to hum, and Nula advances slowly down the empty street, staying close to the curb, unsure yet which route he’ll choose to the hypermarket: because the space that separates him from it could roughly coincide with the surface of a right triangle, the two most direct options from his house are to travel the catheti , which is to say, drive straight to the boulevard, turn east, and drive the full length of the boulevard to the bridge and then continue along the straight highway that in a certain sense extends the boulevard all the way to the supercenter and beyond, to La Guardia and the Paraná fork, or he could choose the hypotenuse, which is to say the port road, and because it’s still before five he decides to drive through the center, and so, somewhat randomly, following the impulse of the moment, he turns at this or that street, always to the north or to the east, driving into the downtown that, in fact, for a sunny April day, around four thirty, is practically deserted. Because the fall business schedules are already in effect, most businesses are still open, though for the most part they’re empty, and very few people get off of the buses that come from the outskirts, advancing almost at a crawl, one behind the other, down particular streets. Nula knows that it’s not only the heat that drives the people from the downtown, but also the supercenter , which, though deserted during the first part of the week, is transformed, over the weekend, into the principal attraction in the region.