Juan José Saer - Scars

You read the papers, last week, I suppose, he said, hesitating at every word.

I told him it had been years since I had read a newspaper.

César Rey, he said. He killed himself. In Buenos Aires.

Chiche? I said. I couldn’t expect anything less from him.

No, Marcos said. It was an accident. He slipped on the subway platform and was hit by a train.

He was drunk, I suppose, I said.

Marquitos rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. He wasn’t crying anymore.

And Clara? I said.

She’s back here again, said Marcos.

Then he left. I walked him to the door and stood there, watching him walk away close to the wall, in order to make the most of the shade that was getting thinner as the morning progressed. I stood in the doorway until he turned the corner. I would have gotten teary too, if I had found out that the guy who ran off with my wife got hit by a train and that my wife was days away from coming back home. I would have sobbed, not just gotten teary. Not because the guy had been my close friend, but because my wife was about to come home. We’d had some good times with Marquitos and Chiche, years back. It had been years since I had seen Chiche. He knew the game too, and liked it.

That night, after teaching Delicia a couple more letters and eating something, I went back to the club. I didn’t work at all during the day. After Marquitos left I got in bed and slept until it was dark. I lost the five thousand at the club and didn’t get a penny of credit. The next day I got up late and went straight to my desk. At five Delicia brought me a mate .

Delicia, I said. I’ve noticed you don’t play the radio.

She said she didn’t like it.

Are you sure you’re not going to start liking it? I said.

She said she was absolutely sure.

I’m going to take it in and have it checked out, then, I said.

So I wrapped the radio in old newspapers and tied it up with some thick twine and went out to sell it. After two hours I had gone to so many appliance stores, and unwrapped and rewrapped the package so many times, that there wasn’t any paper left. The pretense of selling it new collapsed, so I went straight to a pawn shop. They gave me seventeen hundred pesos for it. I bought two kilos of white grapes and went back home. I nibbled on the clusters on the way, and when I got there I found Delicia in the kitchen. She was looking down the corridor to the rear courtyard, at the dark brown spit stains left by my grandfather.

They won’t come out, she said.

My grandfather made them, I said. And he’s dead.

That night, at the club, they gave me three circular, silver-plated chips, and I lost them one after the other. I didn’t even have the satisfaction afterward of saying that I had guessed a single hand right. Nor could I entertain myself, on the way home, in the chances I could have had at any moment in the game. I guessed wrong in three straight hands. There was no chance. I went to bed soaked in sweat, but I slept straight through until the next afternoon. It was murderously hot. I took a shower and went to my desk. For two hours I flipped through a complete collection of Blondie that I had been clipping, or had asked to have clipped, from the magazine Vosotras over the past fifteen years. Each week I would cut out the whole comic, which was printed on the last page, and paste it to a sheet of loose paper. Then I would add the page to a school folder and archive it. The last issues had been cut, but I hadn’t pasted any down. They were stacked between the last page and the cover. There must have been fifty.

Then I sat for hours without doing anything, with all the sheets spread out over the desk. The whole time I stared at some vague point in space, not seeing a thing. Every once in a while I would clear my throat or narrow my eyes, nothing else. At five, Delicia came in with the mate . I recognized her dress; it was an old house frock, flower patterned and faded, that had belonged to my wife. I saw that she’d just showered and combed her hair, because it was wet and pulled back, and a drop of water was running down her forehead. The dress was still too big on her, but eventually it would fit tight.

Delicia, I said. In a couple of days I’m going to buy you a primer.

She said that first she had to learn to read, and I explained that a primer was for just that, learning to read. Then she left. Ten minutes later I started going through the house, looking for things to sell. I found my grandfather’s.38 long Ruby revolver. I went out to sell it and got back after dark, with the revolver stuck in my belt. It didn’t fire. I went inside and picked up the telephone. I looked up Marquitos Rosemberg’s number and called him. He answered himself.

Marquitos, I said. It’s Sergio.

Yes, said Marquitos. Just this morning I spoke with the people at the estate agency. They’ll have the money for you on April fifth.

April fifth? I said.

Yes, said Marquitos. April fifth. I was just about to call you to let you know. I supposed you’d be waiting to hear from me, or something like that.

Yes, I said. But I wasn’t calling about that.

No? said Marquitos. Then why did you call me?

Because of the check you were going to write me yesterday, I said.

What’s going on with the check? said Marquitos.

Nothing, I said. I think I need it. How much were you going to write it for?

I hadn’t decided, said Marquitos. I was going to ask you how much you needed and then make it out.

Could you write it for thirty thousand? I said.

Thirty thousand? said Marquitos. Sure, I can. Tomorrow morning I’ll be sure to bring it by.

No, I said. I need it now.

Now? said Marquitos. I’m standing here naked, about to get in the shower.

I can come by for it, I said.

Marquitos hesitated a second and then said it would be better if we met at a bar downtown. He suggested the arcade. Then I hung up. I gave Delicia her writing lesson and then I left. When I got to the bar it was nine. Marquitos was sitting at a table and he had the check in his hands. There was an empty cup of coffee on the table. The check was made out to bearer , for thirty thousand pesos. Marquitos’s signature was an indecipherable scrawl.

Very good, I said, when he gave me the check. There’s only one more problem: who’s going to change it.

That’s easy, said Marquitos. Give me the check.

I gave it to him and he went over to register and started talking to the cashier. The cashier shook her head, and Marquitos came back, saying that the owner wasn’t there. He stood for a moment next to the table, thinking, with the check in his right hand and a key ring that he jingled in his left. Then he said he would be right back, and he disappeared for fifteen minutes. He came back with three ten-thousand-peso bills folded up in his right hand. While he was sitting down he dropped them on the table. I put them in my pocket. Marquitos was staring at me, with a sort of gleeful, surprised smirk on his face.

If you hadn’t been born with such dark skin, people would realize that the summer sun hasn’t touched you once. You’re very thin, Sergio.

Then he asked me if I had eaten, and I said I hadn’t, so he said he’d take me out.

You had something to do, I said.

I cancelled it, said Marquitos.

That was a mistake, I said. We’ll get bored.

I’ll be in charge of the conversation, said Marquitos.

We went to a grill bar and sat down at a table in the courtyard. From where I sat I could see the grill and the cook working the fire and turning the meat without getting too close to either. Each time he finished some task at the fire, he would turn to a sort of counter where he attended the waiters, and every so often he took a sip of wine. I watched him work the whole time. Then I started to speculate whether or not he would take a drink each time he turned around. I tried to guess the moment it would happen: whether after talking to a waiter, after stoking the coals, or after pulling a strip of meat from a hook near the grill, salting it, and laying it on the grill. Mentally, I started trying to guess the exact moment when his hand would reach for the glass, grab it, and take a drink. I guessed right six times and wrong twice. Marquitos asked me what was the matter, that I wasn’t saying a word, and I said that I felt great and I was happy we had gone out to eat. In the courtyard of the restaurant, the heat was subdued. There was a kind of breeze, and the smoke from the grill kept the mosquitos away.