Juan José Saer - Scars

They let me go the next day, as it was getting dark, after I gave a statement to a judge’s secretary. The secretary knew me, and he said he was going to see if he could take care of things. He also said we were all human.

Some more than others, I said.

Probably, yes, said the secretary. When a guy doesn’t know how else to bust his neighbor’s balls, recommend police work. Don’t worry, counselor, everything here is done with the utmost discretion.

I asked him why discretion was necessary.

He looked at me, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t look away. When we left the station, the manager from the cabaret shook my hand and told me to come see him some night, for a drink. I told him I didn’t drink.

I found Delicia in the kitchen, with her notebook open. She had started drawing the letter A again. I told her I had been in prison, and that I hadn’t washed my face in three days. Then I went up to the bathroom, shaved, and took a shower. While I was shaving, I had a chance to look at myself in the mirror. Yes, I was much thinner, and my beard was going gray. But to myself I was always the same. Other people noticed the changes, after they happened. I was getting old, sure. It would happen again, completely, until I disappeared. Another guy looking for something solid would feel that sudden blackout and disappear when he’d only just glimpsed the possibility of finding his way to it. I could live thirty, forty, fifty more years. It made no difference. I had reached the point where it was clear that the territory I hoped to map out was utterly indecipherable. From the outside, I was passing like a meteor, casting off a green tail that was extinguished just as it was igniting. A blackout, and everything would be dark. Quick spark, then darkness. I stared at myself in the mirror. That’s me, I said. That’s me. Me.

Then I undressed and got in the shower. When I went back down, Delicia was making dinner. We were just sitting down when the doorbell rang. It was Marquitos. I told him to eat something and he started peeling an orange. He asked how I was doing.

Are you really that worried? I said.

Terribly, he said.

Okay. Don’t be, I said.

There’s something self-destructive in all this, Sergio, said Marcos. I’m honestly worried.

There’s no alcohol, I said. I can offer you coffee.

I’ll take it, said Marquitos.

We went to the study, where I had left the comics that Marquitos had brought to the station. I pushed them aside and sat down. Marquitos sat on a sofa.

There’s your blanket and the rest of your whatnots, I said.

After we drank the coffee, he said he wanted to take a drive. I went along. We got in the sky blue car, turned toward the city center, then onto San Martín, drove around the Plaza de Mayo, passing in front of the government buildings and the courthouse, and then turned back onto San Martín, this time to the north. We passed by the corridors of the arcade, and at the corner turned toward the bus station. The post office was ahead, all lit up. Then we took the harbor road, where the palms glowed in the light of the streetlamps, and we reached the suspension bridge. We stopped on the waterfront. We got out and leaned on the cement wall and looked out at the river.

It must be two years since I’ve been here, I said.

Sergio, said Marcos. You’re not even twenty blocks away.

It’s true, I said. But I haven’t come.

I realized he was staring at me.

There’s something — something heroic in this, said Marquitos.

Don’t mythologize, I said.

And something — something. ., said Marquitos.

Stupid, I said.

No. Not that, said Marquitos. Something—

Absurd, I said.

No, he said. Insane.

A swath of light shone on the river, dividing it. A yellowish, jagged band, with black water on both sides. But the water is never the same, Marquitos said when I showed it to him. Neither is the reflection, therefore.

It’s true, I said.

He took me back up the avenue. On 25 de Mayo we turned south, and on the round Banco Municipal clock, in roman numerals, I saw that it was twelve twenty-five. We turned on Primera Junta, passing in front of the building that housed the offices of the estate agency. The clock at the Casa Escassany showed twelve thirty when we passed. When we got to my door I got out and told Marquitos to wait a minute. I went to my desk, opened the second drawer, and took out three ten-thousand-peso bills. I took them to Marquitos and handed them through the window. He took them, saying that he didn’t need them. Then he said he missed Rey.

Chiche was always a thug, I said.

No, said Marcos. It’s something else.

He always needed forgiving for everything, I said.

Who doesn’t? said Marcos.

I wondered if that was an allusion to me. Then he turned on the engine and left. After I got in bed I remembered that I had seen a strip of light at the bottom of the door to the kitchen. I got dressed and went downstairs. When I opened the door I saw Delicia with five decks of cards on the table. Next to the decks there was a disorganized pile of cards, face up. Delicia was drawing them four at a time, in pairs, then she would turn over the first two and see the value.

Two days later I learned that there was a dice game outside of town. It was a clandestine game. I got a telephone call from the worker at the club who never spoke. He gave me the address and said the game started at ten. I would go two or three times a week and always lost. Never very large sums. Twenty, thirty thousand. My heart would start beating hard whenever I picked up the shaker and started to turn it over. Chaos was knocking against the leather sides, I knew, and it was chaos that rolled across the green felt in the shape of those two small cubes. Then the chaos would settle for a moment into a fleeting motionlessness, and then the hands of the worker, who never spoke, erased that moment when he gathered up the dice. It was like an insane force screaming suddenly and then returning to a vague sound. I thought about the dice when I looked at the clouds. They took on shapes that lasted a second, and then, suddenly, with an apparent slowness that confused the eye, they changed. I always lost. On April twenty-third, at midnight, in the rain, I took a taxi from the club, went home, and took out three ten-thousand-peso bills. I had already lost three. I went back in the same taxi. The city, through the windows of the taxi, dripping water, dissolved into a mass of gleaming patches. By April twenty-eighth, I had a hundred thousand pesos left, besides the sixty I was keeping for Delicia in the tea tin. On the twenty-ninth, at three in the afternoon, the club worker called me on the phone. He said that on May second there would be a clandestine baccarat game.

I asked if he was inviting me.

I am inviting you counselor, said the worker. But it’s a large game. Five people are coming in for it. With you it’ll be six.

I said I would go. But he didn’t hang up.

Then he said, I should tell you, counselor, that to play you’ll have to stake a hundred thousand.

How much? I said.

A hundred thousand, said the worker.

A hundred thousand? I said. Who’s going to stake the banco, Rockefeller?

The worker laughed.

Those are the conditions, counselor, he said. I’m very sorry, but those are my orders.

Give me the address, I said.

I can’t give it out over the phone, counselor, said the worker.

Come to my house, then, I said.

He arrived half an hour later and gave me the address. I told him to stay for coffee, and he sat down in an armchair in the study. It was two guys from the Rosario wholesale market, who were coming in specially for the game: one was called Capúa and the other Méndez. Then he named three others, from Esperanza. It’s a no-limit game, said the worker. The bets are for millions of pesos.