Juan José Saer - Scars

He made six bancos and then he passed it. Two guys who were totally tapped out wrote checks to the guy who had given me the one for a million. Ten minutes later we were neck-deep in the bloodiest game I had ever played in my life. By one in the morning I didn’t have anything left but the hundred-sixty in my pocket, which I owed a hundred of, and the check for a million. So I gave back the check and the guy handed me twenty gold plaques. Then he had to give back a check for three hundred thousand that he had just gotten, and he got six gold plaques. The green rectangles had all but disappeared from the table. We used them for tips.

Soon, the chips were collecting in front of a guy dressed in gray. He had on a gold watch. Its band was too big for him, and every time he moved his arm it slid down to the back of his wrist. He was the one who had taken back the check for three hundred. He made twelve bancos in a row, then it went around the circle, and when it got back to him he made another eleven. Before I knew it, all I had was the hundred sixty in my pocket. I asked for a hundred thousand more in chips and lost them.

I leaned over to the worker and whispered that I was short forty thousand but I wanted another hundred thousand. He said he could give it to me, if and when I wrote a check, for the next day. Not only did I not have a check, I said, I didn’t have a bank account, but by the next afternoon I could get the money. Finally, he agreed. I lost that too, paid the cashier, and walked out into the street. A fine rain covered me and I started walking slowly. The rain refreshed my face. On the corner, I stopped suddenly. I had recognized the familiar-looking guy’s face. One night, as I was leaving the game, he had asked me for two hundred pesos for something to eat.

I turned around, quietly went back in, and softly crossed the dark corridor. Before I even reached the door I could already smell the worker’s cologne. As I was turning the handle and pushing the door open, I heard the worker’s voice and then laughter. When I opened the door completely I saw the full picture. They weren’t playing. No chips were out. They were all standing, bent over the center of the table, and the worker was distributing my money.

Listen, fellas, I said. You should take this show on the road, in the countryside. They all turned at once but no one budged. I walked toward them. The guy with the gold watch looked at me with a kind of half smile. The rest were mute and serious. Then the worker reached into this pocket and pulled out a pistol. But I didn’t stop. He moved to block me.

These things always end badly, counselor, he said. Every time.

I didn’t even slow down as I slapped him. I thought of hitting him with a fist, but I didn’t do it for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to hurt him. Second, if I tried to punch him and missed they would’ve beat me down until I was dead. The slap had the intended effect, and not slowing down reinforced it. The pistol fell from his hand and the others spread around the table in a semicircle. The ten-thousand-peso bills were scattered everywhere. I gathered them up calmly, counted them, and put them in my pocket. As I was leaving the worker said, These things always end badly, every time.

I slammed the door and in a second I was in the street. The rain covered me again. I walked so slowly that it took me more than half an hour to get home. I entered in the darkness and went to my desk. Then I turned on the light, opened the first drawer, took out the tea tin, and put Delicia’s sixty thousand in it. I put the tin back, dropped the other hundred thousand in the drawer, and closed it. I turned off the light and went upstairs. In the bathroom I undressed and washed my face. Then I went into my room, in the dark, and got in bed. As I was laying down I realized Delicia was there, awake, her eyes open, waiting for me. She didn’t say a word. When I touched her I realized she didn’t have anything on. She was shaking.

They cheated, Delicia, I said. They don’t gamble, they cheat instead. My grandfather knew.

Then we rolled around in bed for the rest of the night. When I woke up, it was the afternoon. I took a shower and went downstairs. Delicia was in the kitchen. She was staring hard at the brown stains in the courtyard.

There must be some way to get them out, she said.

I said I wasn’t sure there was and went to the study. I didn’t do anything. I flipped through my comic collection, but couldn’t find anything to focus on. Then I reread my essay on Chic Young. It sounded pretty insolent. At five, Delicia brought the mate . Her sixty thousand was in the first drawer, I said, in the tin. She could take them whenever she wanted. I went into the kitchen after it got dark, ate something, and then shut myself back up in the study. Before midnight, I went to bed. Delicia was there. We rolled around for an hour or so, and then I fell asleep. I woke up before dawn. Delicia was asleep. I got up, washed my face, then I went down to the kitchen and made a mate . I went to my desk and looked out at the rain until it was light out. The sky changed color. First it was blue, then it took on a greenish tint, and finally it ended up a steel gray that lasted the rest of the day. At eight I looked up Negro Lencina’s number and called him. The shopkeeper picked up and told me to hold on. For ten minutes I didn’t hear anything, until finally the shopkeeper picked up again. El Negro was at a wake, he said. That can’t be right, I said, the wake was the day before. But the shopkeeper said he gathered that it wasn’t the same wake, but another one, and then he hung up.

THE WIPER BLADES RHYTHMICALLY SKIM THEwindshield surface, where rain droplets strike faintly from the off-white mass that surrounds the car and thickens at a distance and through which the dripping wet facades appear at breaks in the fog, the two rows of facades moving backward, away, down the narrow, gleaming street. The side windows are steamed over, and looking through them I can only make out blurs moving slowly through the fog, the mass of wet particles colliding, and the thick gray or yellow smudges of the facades. Ahead on the corner a solitary gorilla, wrapped in a blue raincoat, a hat smashed low on his head, so that his face is barely visible, doubles over, coughing. Then I pass by and leave him behind.

I turn on Mendoza, where the sun should be, and the car glides slowly, and I pass the bus station. Several gorillas pace or stand motionless on the platforms next to packages and suitcases. The platforms, open at the back, fade into the fog and the still-present shade of night that contrasts with it, almost blinding. A smooth shade, polished and dense. And the gorillas who shake their head or wipe a hand over their brow or bring a cigarette to their lips introduce a white smudge that disappears immediately into the dark penumbra. No buses are on the platforms, and the closed windows keep out the sounds. I can’t tell whether the loudspeakers that announce the arrival and departure of the buses are on, or if the gorillas’ footsteps or their voices, echoing over the oil-stained cement and the platforms’ sloped roofs, are loud or soft. All I hear is the steady hum of the engine, which varies only when I slow down to take a corner or accelerate suddenly, and then only for a moment, if from distraction I have pressed down too hard on the gas.

I make a left and pass the already-illuminated post office. Gorillas pass behind the windows on the first floor and behind the large counters. Through breaks in the fog I see their torsos moving past the counters as though by conveyer. Now the car’s movement, rumbling over the shining cobblestones of the harbor road, becomes less regular. Through the windshield I see tall palms approach me, wrapped in fog, and the poles of streetlamps that end in white globes that emit a weak light, swallowed now by the morning. The tree trunks drip water. The harbor road is completely deserted. The palms and the globes of the streetlamps approach me and then disappear behind. And the damp cobblestones advance toward the wheels of the car, and when I pass over a dip in the road, where a puddle has formed, they make a liquid murmur that blends with the monotone hum of the engine. Briefly the windshield fills up with thick splatters that the wiper blades sweep away, first spreading them over the glass where they struck and then sweeping them to the edges of the windshield, leaving me just enough space to see the road ahead. The clean space on the windshield blurs at the edges, and the drops that fall ceaselessly over it hold their shape for a moment, emitting a highly delicate shining fringe, and then they disappear.