Juan José Saer - La Grande

His right hand rests on the open briefcase, his fingers playing along the vertical, soft leather dividers that separate the four compartments, which, in fact, contains very few things: the manila folder containing the treatise on precisionism, which he finished reading a while ago, adding a few annotations in the margins, another folder, this one of light green card stock, containing an old article from La Región , with an even older photo picturing several well-known collaborators on the first volume of precisionism, during a dinner at La Giralda, along with a few other papers, in particular a letter that Pichón had sent him from Paris the month before, and to which, for lack of time, he’d only responded to the day before yesterday. In another compartment of the briefcase is the gift for his sister, a fantasy bracelet that Alicia picked out, wrapped in metallic paper, which he bought that morning on Calle Córdoba, and finally, in the fourth compartment, an alfajor given to him by the driver as he was getting on the bus, compliments of the house and included with the price of the trip, and next to the alfajor , a book about Hujalvu, the butterfly painter, which he’d been thumbing through on the way there, and whose French introduction “ Vie et mort des papillons, ” he’d begun to read (the book is a gift from Pichón, which he’d sent him from France for his birthday). Finally his fingers, and not Tomatis himself, decide to grasp the green folder, half-opening it, shuffling through the papers that it contains, and picking out Pichón’s letter and opening it in the light, unfolding it, to reread it:

Carlitos. How’s the March heat treating you? We’re still in the middle of winter here. You must be surprised to be getting a letter from me after our phone call on Sunday, but that night, after dinner, I came up with a poem that, from a distance, has to do with our conversation. So I’m sending it to you. It’s a vague parody of La Fontaine.

MAÎTRE CORBEAU

Maître corbeau là-haut perché

rien de bon n’annonçait,

ni d’ailleurs, rien de mauvais.

Il se tenait là-haut, neutre et muet.

Aucun présage ne l’habitait.

Aussi extérieur que l’arbre, le soleil, la forêt

Et aussi privé de sens que de secret:

forme noire sans raison répétée

tache d’encre dans le vide imprimée.

Maître corbeau là-haut perché .

What do you think? Don’t tell me anything right away. The question begs reflection. What, on the other hand, I want you to send me soon is a detailed explanation, on paper, of your thesis on Oedipus. Certainly in this century Oedipus has become a stereotype, a two-dimensional caricature like Batman or Patoruzú, but one of his characteristics, his blindness, still fascinates me. Hugs to everyone. Pichón. P.S., What do you think of Hujalvu? A western specialist says that he’d specialized in a single species of butterflies (Inachis io) , but one of his students wrote, in the mid-eighteenth century, that he always painted ONE SINGLE butterfly.

Tomatis finishes rereading the letter, but he continues to hold it, motionless, even with his face, just below his eyes, without refolding it. For the last month the problem has intrigued him. The same butterfly? Aesthetically, the choice is reasonable, and, one might even say, necessary, but how would it be possible to keep a single butterfly intact over an eighty-year life without it eventually disintegrating, unless, after a certain point, he was painting from memory, not from the material, pulverized after a few decades, but rather the shape imprinted on him forever, which, having observed it to the point of possession, he was able to turn in every possible direction. Tomatis shakes his head thoughtfully, with an almost imperceptible slowness, and without much conviction refolds the letter, handwritten in green ink, and drops it into one of the compartments of the briefcase.

Moving directly north along the highway in which, over a hundred and sixty-seven kilometers, there’s not a single curve, at ninety kilometers per hour — the legal speed limit for interurban passenger transport throughout the country — Tomatis has the west to his left, the east to his right, and the south to his back. After leaving Rosario, along the loop road surrounded by shantytowns, in the right lane of the highway, as far as San Lorenzo more or less, the traffic was very dense, but afterward it began to thin out. All the same, at the moment when he drops the folded letter into the briefcase, an engine roars to his left, and the most likely empty tractor trailer that passes at a high speed hides the sun for several seconds, and the increasingly horizontal rays of light are erased, intercepted by the double trailer of the truck, and almost immediately, when the truck has finished passing them, they reappear. Every so often, cars also pass them at full speed, advancing along the fast lane, and disappear quickly to the north. In the opposite direction, cars, trucks, and buses follow each other mechanically, but at moments long stretches of the highway are empty. The buses, green, red, and orange, announcing the names of their companies in large letters everywhere along the highway, drive toward Rosario and Buenos Aires, and some, the specials probably, toward Mar del Plata and even Bariloche, from the city or from Paraná or Resistencia or Asunción del Paraguay. Once, at a stop between Rosario and Buenos Aires, in San Pedro, Tomatis saw a double-decker that was going to Machu Picchu. Tomatis remembers thinking, A bus to Machu Picchu? And why not Tibet? And he smiles again, and turns around discreetly again, afraid that the two at the back will catch him laughing to himself, but apparently they’ve been subjugated by the sports page from La Región that he’s just given them.

Half opening the light green folder, separating its edges, he carefully pulls out, from between the few papers alongside it, the yellowed clipping from La Región , which is at least five years old, with the photo that, if the date that the article attributes to it is correct, is around half a century old at the moment in which he’s now studying it carefully. There are eleven men, all of them in suit and tie, except for one, who wears a dark bowtie. Though it’s difficult to tell much about the location, because the photo was taken from a practically empty corner of the room, Tomatis doesn’t need to read the caption printed below the photo to recognize La Giralda, gone for years now, since they tore down the central market. The article is titled “The Precisionist Group,” and a lead-in explains, On the eve of another anniversary of the creation of precisionism, this article recalls the history of the movement and the personality of its leader, Mario Brando . The caption printed below the photograph mentions the place where it was taken, but not the date, and identifies the people present. Seven are sitting, and four are standing behind them; in the background, turned away from the camera, standing in front of a black rectangle below a hanging lamp, there’s a waiter, facing what could be the entrance to the kitchen, obscured by the photograph’s narrow depth of field. It’s a classic after-dinner photo; the four who have stood up must have been sitting with their backs to the photographer, who must have made them move so that everyone would be facing the same way. Their chairs are not in the frame, except for one, a piece of which is visible in the far right corner of the picture, because they pulled them away from the table, and so the large, messy table is clearly visible. On top of the white tablecloth there are two siphons of seltzer, two oil bottles, half-full glasses, plates containing the remains of food, probably dessert (and probably cheese and sweets, after the alphabet soup and the obligatory Spanish-style stew), with utensils crossed on top or thrown carelessly on the tablecloth. There are ashtrays, but there aren’t any bottles of wine, and Tomatis remembers, as he does every time he looks at the photo and examines it up close, that someone, describing Brando’s control over his disciples, told him that if he wasn’t drinking then the others couldn’t drink either, and so many of them drank in secret. This same person told him that only when his brother-in-law, General Ponce, when he was still a first lieutenant, or a captain, attended the dinners, could the guests drink whatever they wanted, because the general would order large quantities of the best wines, something Brando disapproved of, though he never dared to contradict him, because the more Ponce drank, and though he never became violent, the more uncontrollable he became. Only the next day, in private, would Brando question him, thinking that family business should be conducted behind closed doors, but whenever he, Ponce, bumped into some member of the group on the street, and the first lieutenant, laughing, told him what had happened and how terrorized Brando kept his troops, it caused this person a dark pleasure to learn about his family affairs.