Juan José Saer - La Grande

— You’re not listening to me, Américo’s voice says. Is everything alright?

— No, Nula says, with a quiet smile, I haven’t come to terms with you doubting my intentions with Ms. Virginia, that’s all.

— I’m just not buying it, period, Américo says, and swatting the air with the back of his hairy hand, he decides to continue: a typical, high quality wine fractionated here in the province and not in the production region would be a good business right now, because the taste for wine has always existed in this country, but because of all the noxious sludge that’s been bottled here the customer of limited means, especially after all the crises, has stopped drinking wine and prefers a good cold beer, especially in the hot months. The good wines are too expensive, and the cheap ones are undrinkable. What’s missing, therefore, is that one, Américo says, gesturing energetically but vaguely at something somewhere in the hypermarket, beyond the registers, and despite the vagueness of the gesture, Nula imagines the intersection in the beverage section where the publicity stand has been set up alongside the neat rows of red and white wine bottles, distinguished clearly from a distance because the label of the red wines is red and the white wines a pale green. The feeling of happiness has vanished, and commerce no longer offers the return of a world without reflection, and so he listens to Américo’s ideas skeptically: first of all, after his experience with Aconcagua— the pinnacle of table wines , according to a radio campaign at the time — Chela won’t let him try to build his own fractionator and, in his opinion (which is to say, his as in Nula’s), the arrangement that Américo has with Amigos del Vino is less risky and more profitable because he can also count on the support of the owner, who is in fact a friend and who’s incorporated him to the firm under especially advantageous conditions; and on the other hand, expensive wines have a better profit margin.

— Why do you want to build a fractionator of average wine, Nula says, if fine wines have a better margin and the risk falls totally on the central house? For us, everything is profit, it’s a gift.

— What you lack is a sense of the social aspects of business, Américo says with a beatific smile that he accompanies with a slow movement of his head both sideways and slightly upward, his eyes narrowed, meant to connote the sublime, and adding: With our whips we’ll drive the merchants from the temple.

As though on cue, the background music, which had been Rififí, is interrupted, and the masculine voice of the booster announces: For Holy Week, the Warden hypermarkets are hosting a raffle of freshwater and saltwater fish, both fresh and frozen varieties, Norwegian salt cod, tuna, or Gran Paraná pejerrey, for instance, essential for the banquets at the end of Lent , and the music resumes.

As they leave the bar, they see that the crowd has now invaded the supercenter . Through the windows of the bar, which face the parking lot, Nula, while he talked to Américo, had been watching the cars pull in and drive around and around looking for an open parking space. The sounds of footsteps, of voices, of laughter, can only be distinguished when they issue from a nearby source, because as the source moves away the different sounds merge into a single hum that, in contrast to the ambient loop and the voice over the loudspeaker that interrupts it every so often, sounds like a dull, monotonous, and continuous hum, which, intermittently, is punctuated by a set of chords and a recitative. Moving slowly through the crowd, Nula can discern fragments of voices and laughter that almost immediately fade and disappear into the background. They cross the toy section, the electrical appliances, the kitchen supplies, they take a loop around the cheeses, around the prepared foods, and past the frozen produce, and after glancing quickly at the labels and the prices on the shelves of wine that comprise the hypermarket’s typical stock, they turn toward the stand. Although it’s ten of seven, Chela isn’t there, but when they approach the stand, one of the girls tells them that she was already waiting for them but that she’d left again, saying that she’d be right back. Some five or six people are waiting for their turn to taste the wine, and another three or four already have a plastic cup in their hand, apparently studying its contents, or simply waiting to be served a second time. Américo elbows Nula discreetly but enthusiastically so he’ll look at all the bottles that are missing from the shelves, whites as well as reds, more than twenty altogether. At five after seven, Chela appears, pushing a cart with some things that she’s picked out: two or three cleaning products, a small box of frozen salt cod, a small box of homemade ravioli, makeup, a small garden spade, and a necktie with red and blue angled stripes for Américo. She picks it up and shows it to him, and then she folds it in half and holds it up to his bearded chin, letting it fall against his chest, over the one he’s already wearing, to see how it looks. Then she pulls away the tie, kisses him on the part of his face, near the cheekbone, where there is no beard, and puts the tie back into the cart. Nula watches them, at once sympathetic and sorrowful; he thinks about La India, alone for years, and about his father, lying on the cold floor of a pizzeria — the crumpled and bloody corpse that actually may not have been killed by the gunshots because the man who occupied it was already dead to himself, since the time of delirium and frenzy, long before the superfluous bullets reached him.

To pass the time, Nula accompanies Chela and Américo, who are heading back to Paraná, to their car. They get in line at a register, and when they walk out to the parking lot the warm and somewhat humid air sticks to their cheeks. Although it’s already seven thirty, it’s still not completely dark. In the west, above the city, an enormous, bright red stain extends, smooth and uniform, over the sky, and below, through the shadows on the ground, the lights of the waterfront are visible. Américo suggests, possibly with an implicit warning, that he should leave too, but Nula says that he prefers to stay a while longer, until after eight, in case the girls at the stand need anything. His eyes follow Américo’s car as it drives away, and then he lifts his head toward the tense, brilliant stars in the dark blue sky. Ceaselessly, cars enter and exit the parking lot, they form lines for gas at the service station, they drive around looking for an open space, and their occupants come and go with their carts, empty or full of merchandise, all distinct and very real in the evening, yet at the same time improbable and somehow vague. The extensive facade of the supercenter , with its many entrances, the one to the hypermarket, to the mall, to the multiplex, illuminates the dark air with its neon signs, its geometric, outward projections of light, its lamplights indicating the edges of the cement that separates the sidewalk from the parking lot. Nula goes back in through the multiplex, studies the show times, and sees that there are lines forming for the eight o’clock show. Then he passes through the cafeteria, which is now full, and observes the crowd from the entrance: the line that fills the passageway between the main room and the dishes and beverages; the customers who, leaving the registers, carry their loaded trays, moving slowly, uncertain and somewhat discouraged, looking for a table. Farther off, the small room where they were selling tickets to the Sunday match is closed, and a small sign taped to the wooden door announces: TICKETS FOR THE CLÁSICO SOLD OUT. A man and a woman practically running from the parking lot freeze, stupefied, when they see the sign. Nula walks into the hypermarket, and, moving slowly through the crowded aisles, without stopping once to look at any of the many products on display, eventually arrives at the stand and stops a certain distance away. The prospective tasters of the new line of table wines swarm around the counter. As she’s serving a customer, the girl who offered Moro the wine, and who’s seen him approach, gives him a friendly gesture, and so Nula walks up to her.