Juan José Saer: La Grande

— I feel like a sideshow freak, Gutiérrez murmurs. I wish I’d never been born.

— It’s not so bad, Nula says, also in a low voice, prefaced by the same short, dry laugh that, as he emits it, he realizes he uses only with Gutiérrez, meant perhaps to display a self-control that, in fact, is far from authentic. But I know what you mean, he adds. My father was convinced that the real problem with the world isn’t poverty, but wealth, and that’s why he had to die.

Turning his head suddenly, Gutiérrez observes him carefully, but all he finds is Nula’s profile, because Nula, as though he hadn’t noticed anything, continues looking ahead, into the rainy space that separates them from a crop of saturated trees.

— Someone over there traded in his car, and so your father had to get murdered, mutters Gutiérrez, turning back toward the trees that obliterate the horizon at the end of the landscape. And, after a short pause, the litany, which Nula could see coming, starts up again: who’ve ransacked the planet and now seem determined to do the same thing to the whole solar system, all so that they don’t have to resole their shoes and instead buy themselves a new pair every month; who build luxury resorts in the poorest areas so they can water ski and scuba dive and get a tan in the middle of winter and stay in bungalows that simulate a primitive existence but where they serve all-you-can-eat breakfasts and lunches that Roman orgy-goers would be embarrassed by, and especially at night when they go clubbing and swap wives and then complain when the locals kidnap a handful of them that they never hear from again, they, who would ravage everything to see their privileges maintained or amplified and are inclined to do the same over the ruins of the whole universe simply from the voluptuousness their dominion arouses. And Nula, with resigned irony, thinks, Yeah, but he bought himself Doctor Russo’s mansion, two kilometers from a shantytown, and, according to Moro, you’d have to calculate his fortune by the millions.

Though they walk downstream, the direction the river runs is not indicated by anything on the surface but the tension created there by the many rough and parallel waves, riddled with the projectiles of rain that pierce them as, pushed by the southwest wind, they encounter the resistance of the current. This tension is so uniform and the fall of the drops so regular that the rippled surface of the water seems less like a medium whose impulse is renewed continuously by the opposing forces that push it in contradictory directions than like a fixed, gelatinous substance that, because of some hidden tremor, trembles and vibrates constantly, and the drops that strike it, despite being always new, seem always the same, captured for a gray but distinct instant.

When they reach the grove and start to cross it, the tall crowns of the eucalyptus planted in rows parallel to the river — they have to turn away from the riverbank slightly as they approach the center of the town — shelter them from the rain, but at the same time the rain seems more real among the trees than in the open; the bark of the trees seems lacquered by the damp, and the ochre trunks, dark and shining where they’re not covered with bark, soaked in water, make it more distinct, as do the drops that cascade from the branches, and the odor of eucalyptus that the water amplifies, and the soft but numerous sound that the drops, continuous and polyphonic, produce against the branches and the trunks, against the leaf bed rotting on the ground, against the earth. At their arrival, two or three toads, motionless at the foot of a tree, stiffen and puff up from anxiety, from anger, or from fear, and then immediately flee with ineffective and clumsy jumps in various directions, while in the treetops a tumult of leaves and wings produced by invisible birds — of considerable size judging by the sound’s intensity — indicates that the presence of Gutiérrez and Nula has not gone unnoticed. As they leave the grove they are able to make out, beyond a narrow ditch so choked with weeds that it’s impossible to tell if there’s water at the bottom, the first houses, on the first streets, which apparently follow the straight line that the municipality assigned them, but, lacking sidewalks or gutters or even trees to mark the boundaries between street and sidewalk, are not yet fully streets; there are only a few isolated houses, built of unplastered brick or adobe, two or three per block, constructed along the outer perimeter of the rectangular territories that delimit the blocks, as in so many other towns, whose outskirts, though included within the urban space by the geometric design that demarcated them before the town was chartered, before materializing into houses, streets, life — an abstract idea of the town, diagramed with a ruler, in the same imagination of those who projected it — are confused with the countryside. Where the sidewalks should be there are weeds that, in some cases, extend from the sandy street all the way to the edges of the houses; sometimes, because the inhabitants have pulled them up, but almost always because their simple coming and going has eliminated the weeds, a thin path of bare earth has been opened from the fence (when there is a fence) to the middle of the street.

The rain seems more mournful in the empty town than in the countryside or on the river, and though the houses are becoming more and more frequent as they approach the center, and, here and there, though it’s not yet dark, some are lit up inside, these lights do not manage to give an impression of shelter or well-being. In the front gardens the plants drip water, and at the foot of each — hibiscus (which in the area they call juveniles ), roses, dahlias, chrysanthemums, and many others — lies a multicolored jumble of fallen petals flattened by the rain. Through one window, an old woman holding a forgotten mate in her hand meets their gazes but does not respond to their subtle greeting. In the side yards and rear courtyards, visible through screen doors or open gates, hanging clothes, propane tanks, blackened furniture, broken dishes, and brightly colored plastic toys, abandoned on the ground, shine with water. Finally they reach the town proper, but the neat cabins with their trim lawns and swimming pools don’t lessen the oppressive feel, and not only from being empty in the middle of the week, because the ones that are lit up, with a new car parked out front or in a garage whose door was left open, and even those where they can see people coming and going through the windows, also secrete tedium, if not affliction. In many houses the flickering lights, caused by the discontinuity of televised images they project, make patterns that filter through the windows, despite the curtains or shutters being closed, and Gutiérrez and Nula, without making any comment, as they advance through the silence that accompanies the splashing of their footsteps, under the multicolored umbrella that, like the yellow rain jacket and the red camper, glows dimly in the blue dusk, both guess, from the fragmentary sounds that reach them every so often — voices and music that retain their shape despite the lack of context and the distance — that in every house they’re watching the same show, some afternoon soap opera no doubt.

Closer to the center of town, the sidewalks are fully formed, some are even made of brick, and on the streets immediately surrounding the square these are ancient structures, high above the street, bulwarks against the floods that, when they’re heavy, Nula explains, can overrun even the highest sidewalks and flood the inner courtyards beyond. An illuminated doorway opens onto the high brick sidewalk and a uniformed guard — the watchman at the entrance to the police station — watches them curiously, slightly intimidated, apparently, possibly because of their expensive clothing, since it goes without saying that the wealthy inspire deference in the keepers of the peace and that they serve at their pleasure. Gutiérrez stops suddenly, and Nula, realizing it only after a few seconds, takes two or three steps beyond the umbrella’s protective canopy and stops in the middle of the sidewalk without turning around. From where he stands, he can hear the sound that the guard’s shoes make as he comes to attention, the exchange of greetings, and the cordial and intricate directions that the guard’s heavily accented voice gives Gutiérrez to Escalante’s house.