Juan José Saer - Scars

It’s the same voice as always, forcibly high-pitched, shrill, like a puppet, to keep from being recognized. It calls me the same names as always: son of a bitch, thief, faggot. It tells me to say something, to not keep quiet, that it knows full well that I’m there, listening. I don’t open my mouth. It says the day is fast approaching when I’ll pay for it all with blood and tears. It says that this afternoon while I was at the courthouse everyone got a scandalous view of my wife taking one of her studs to a motel room. It asks if I wouldn’t have wanted that stud for myself, isn’t that true ? It laughs, sharp and jagged. Then it hangs up, and I do too.

At two in the morning I go to the window and watch the rain falling over the park, and then I go to bed. I lay down face up, in complete darkness, and fall immediately into a quick, vertiginous, and fragmented dream in which a horde of gorillas attends a ritual sacrifice. I’m the victim. I see a bloody knife shining in the sunlight but I don’t feel myself die. I know I’ve died because the knife is bloody, but I can’t see myself, alive or dead. Then I see an open space enclosed by a horizon of rocks and trees. The sun glimmers in the hollows and reflects off the leaves, flashing briefly. In the distance, an indistinct body is lying against a tree. I see the body and the horizon but I can’t see myself. I wake up and turn on the light. It’s not even three. I don’t go back to sleep.

I get up when it seems like five thirty and walk slowly to the bathroom. I listen to the monotone hum of the razor as I shave. Then I shower. I stay under the hot water for a long time. I get dressed, drink a cup of hot milk in the kitchen, and then I walk out.

It’s raining. Through the trees in the park I can see a sliver of light. I have to try the ignition a few times before the engine starts. The windshield wiper starts as the engine does. Each time the engine is about to turn over and fails, the wiper blades flutter tensely, trembling, and then are static again. Finally the engine turns over and the wiper blades move. I cross San Martín to the boulevard, turn right, reach the suspension bridge, cross the old and the new waterfronts, circle the Guadalupe roundabout, and drive back in the opposite direction, toward the city center. At the mouth of the suspension bridge, I turn right onto the boulevard, heading west. When I reach its end I turn left onto the Avenida del Oeste and then left again at the end onto the Avenida del Sur, heading east, and when I reach the courthouse I turn onto the sidewalk and into the rear courtyard. I stop the car and get out and feel the cold rain on my face. I cross the empty corridors, the empty checkerboard lobby, and start up the white marble staircase with my right hand on the banister. On the third floor I look down at the lobby. It’s empty, and the black and white tiles appear tiny, regular, and polished. I enter my office, passing first by the secretary’s unoccupied desk, and turn on the light. I approach the window and see the palms and the orange trees in the park and the white masses of rain that condense around them. The white raindrops seem to rotate slowly. An anemic, gray light enters the office. The Plaza de Mayo is deserted. Its red paths crisscross under the foliage.

When the secretary arrives he stops in front of my desk, his graying head tilted toward me. “I need to say something,” he says. I look up. He hesitates. “I’ve noticed. . I’ve noticed a certain unwarranted severity with the witnesses. And also certain irregularities in procedure,” he says. “And?” I say. “I think, Judge, that you’re very tired and should take a vacation. You don’t look well. Pardon the impertinence, but I’m sure something bad is happening to you.” “Don’t worry, Vigo,” I say, “I’m perfectly fine.” “Another thing, Judge,” says the secretary. “This morning we get paid for April.” “That’s great,” I say. “Have a car readied and look for a clerk. We’re going to the scene in a minute.” “It’s all set,” says the secretary. “You’re very efficient, Vigo,” I say. “You should be here instead of me.”

We leave for the crime scene. The driver and the clerk are in the front seats, and the secretary and I are in the back. The car is waiting outside the front entrance to the courthouse. We find it — the secretary and I — after crossing the square lobby where the first groups are gathering in the center of the checkerboard space, talking in loud voices. The clerk and the driver are already inside the car, waiting for us. We turn at the first corner, onto the Avenida del Sur, heading west. At the next corner the red traffic light stops us. When the light changes, and the green shimmer colors the swirl of droplets around it, we cross the intersection and continue on. We turn west at the Avenida del Oeste and soon the regimental gardens and the gray armory building pass to our left. We turn at the market onto a cobblestone street and pass alongside its lateral wall. Through the side window I see the wall of the wholesale market interrupted suddenly by the large entranceway. In the stone courtyard, which is bordered by two long rows of stands crammed with fruit and vegetables, in bags or crates or simply piled up on the ground, a mass of trucks circles slowly with gorillas behind the wheels or standing with their legs apart on the wooden beds. Several gorillas sit atop immense piles of vegetables, bags of potatoes, or crates of fruit loaded onto the backs of the trucks. Then the wholesale market is left behind. We drive six blocks and turn left again. At the next corner we stop. There aren’t even cobblestones, only rubble from construction jobs packed down on the street. Weeds are growing from a ditch full of water next to the road. We get out and walk to the dirt sidewalk — mud, really — after crossing over a tiny bridge, that’s barely wide enough for a single truck, and then we come to a rectangular building of un-plastered brick with an open wooden door in the center and a tiny open window above it and to the right. A guard is standing in front of the door. Between the sidewalk and the front of the building there’s a wide plot of bare land, without a single blade of grass, covered in footprints. A narrow path of half-buried bricks leads from the sidewalk to the door of the building. We cross the path, balancing, under the rain. The secretary goes first, and I follow, and behind me come the clerk and the driver. When we reach the door the guard stiffens up and stands aside to let us pass. We enter the store.

It’s a square room with a zinc roof supported by several joists above us. The counter is to the left of the entrance, and beyond the counter are the shelves. In the center of the room, to the right of the counter and almost in line with the entrance, is a pyramid of canned products. A small doorway covered with a cretonne curtain opens between the shelves and leads to the interior rooms. The blond gorilla is behind the counter, and he stands up suddenly when we come in. He greets us and asks if we’d like something to drink. “He was standing over there,” he says eventually, gesturing with his head toward the end of the counter that’s next to the front wall, where a meager light falls through the window. “The rest of them were more or less there, where you are. And I was standing where I am now.” I look at the secretary. “Have the reconstruction done by tomorrow afternoon,” I say, and then I look at the clerk. “Map out the place,” I say. “It’s two squares,” says the clerk, smiling and looking around, “One filled and the other empty. We just passed through the empty one. Now we’re in the filled one. When we leave, we’ll pass through the empty one again.” “Yes,” I say, “but make it just the same.” I turn back to the blond gorilla. “No one came in or out while they were here?” I say. “Not as far as I know,” says the blond gorilla. “How is it you reached the courtyard first if you were behind the counter?” “I ran,” says the blond gorilla, “And they were standing there and then followed after me.” I walk toward the door. The guard, who is watching us, steps aside. I look out. A group of onlookers gather on the sidewalk. The square courtyard is empty, covered with tracks that swirl around and tighten into crisscrosses, forming an intricate pattern in the area near the straight, muddy path of half-buried bricks. The courtyard is empty now. The blond gorilla has come around the counter and is standing next to me. The secretary is behind him, and the clerk is drawing out a map on the counter. “He drove the truck into the courtyard,” he says, “and parked it facing that way.” He makes a gesture indicating that the truck was parallel to the un-plastered brick wall, over the path. “When we came out she was over there,” says the blond gorilla, and he points to an empty space about three meters from the door, on the brick path. “Then he turned the truck around, over there, crossed the bridge, and turned the corner. The door was open.”