La Grande (41 page)

Over the past two days the city has returned to a summer that, judging by the increasing heat, would naturally be called intense and, for the same reason, temporary. The rain earlier that week, on top of the humidity it brought with it, had given renewed life to the vegetation: first the water had cleansed the foliage, and then, penetrating the earth over two consecutive and almost full
days and nights, had helped the sap to feed the branches, rising and extending to each leafy tip, to every tiny filament at the farthest ends from the trunk, and as a result of this secret, periodic trajectory between the earth and the water, the light and the air, appeared, in passing, traces of reddish or tender green buds, little flowers opened temporarily, and branches loaded, once again, with new, firm, and very green leaves. Even the people on the street have let themselves be conquered by this extension of the summer, and the deserted streets reveal that the sense to not be seen on the street until at least after six, when the sun begins to fall, is now intrinsic to the city's inhabitants, always alert, though the summer may have passed, to the menace of the heat. Everyone who's braved the outdoors, at least in the streets far from the city center, now walks on the western sidewalk, in the shade, and if they're forced to cross they do so at the very last moment, risking as little time in the sun as possible. As he pulls out, the air conditioning starts to hum, and Nula advances slowly down the empty street, staying close to the curb, unsure yet which route he'll choose to the hypermarket: because the space that separates him from it could roughly coincide with the surface of a right triangle, the two most direct options from his house are to travel the
catheti
, which is to say, drive straight to the boulevard, turn east, and drive the full length of the boulevard to the bridge and then continue along the straight highway that in a certain sense extends the boulevard all the way to
the supercenter
and beyond, to La Guardia and the Paraná fork, or he could choose the hypotenuse, which is to say the port road, and because it's still before five he decides to drive through the center, and so, somewhat randomly, following the impulse of the moment, he turns at this or that street, always to the north or to the east, driving into the downtown that, in fact, for a sunny April day, around four thirty, is practically deserted. Because the fall business schedules are already in effect, most businesses are still
open, though for the most part they're empty, and very few people get off of the buses that come from the outskirts, advancing almost at a crawl, one behind the other, down particular streets. Nula knows that it's not only the heat that drives the people from the downtown, but also
the supercenter
, which, though deserted during the first part of the week, is transformed, over the weekend, into the principal attraction in the region.

When he turns onto the avenue he accelerates slightly, passes a couple of trucks—the second one, painted red, has the words
VISIT HELVECIA, FOR THE GOLDEN DORADO
printed in large, black letters on the trailer—and moves ahead, alone, toward the bridge. Coming out of the bridge onto the highway, he looks, through the gap left by the suspension bridge after it fell during one of the last major floods, at the large circle of water known as the lagoon, which he was contemplating that morning from the empty bar in Guadalupe, and though, for the moment, the full length of the surface, seen from a distance, appears to be made of a luminous, fractured substance, the quality of the light has changed since this morning. Closer, on the opposite shore from the waterfront, at the Piedras Blancas beach, which had been deserted the past few weeks, he sees several bathers splashing in the water and others, stretched out on the sand, tanning in the sun. The short, dark green station wagon, bought second-hand a couple of years ago with the money he earned from selling wine, leaves behind the road bridge and, accelerating, starts down the four-lane asphalt road that everyone simply calls
the highway
, and which narrows over the next three or four kilometers until it splits to the right toward Paraná, and to the east, along the coastal road. But the hypermarket is right there, barely a kilometer from the bridge, on the right hand side of the road.

Though the parking lot isn't yet full, he has to drive around a couple of times before parking because there isn't a single spot left
in the first three or four rows closest to the main entrance. There are lots of cars from around the region that have been parked there all day, while their owners run errands downtown, leaving the shopping at
the supercenter
, the movies, and other activities for later in the afternoon, and even that night. The specialists who built
the supercenter
—the autonomous society to which they belonged must have been headquartered in the United States, in Europe, or in Switzerland, for instance, or in some other fiscal paradise like Monte Carlo, Luxemburg, or the Canary Islands—were not concerned in the least with the swamp on which they constructed it; after all, Venice and Saint Petersburg had been built on swamps, and they hadn't sunk yet. The primary function of
the supercenter
was to create a strategic point where customers from many points around the region could converge; although a couple of bus lines from the city extended their routes across the river for the first time in the history of local public transportation, the city's inhabitants would be grossly mistaken if they thought that
the supercenter
was intended exclusively for their use. The strategists hoped to attract (and they were quite successful at it) clients from upward of sixty or seventy kilometers away, and even beyond, along the coastal road, the route that runs north along the west bank of the Paraná and its tributaries, but also, across the Colastiné bridge and the underwater tunnel, several kilometers after the fork, people from Entre Ríos province, on the eastern shore, not only from Paraná, the capital, but also from important cities to the south and east of the capital. From the other side of the city, to the north, to the south, and especially to the west, the towns and cities of the plain also send their processions of the faithful every weekend. Every social class sends its delegations; everyone that has something to spend, however little that may be, spends it at
the supercenter
, where even the most intimate desires are anticipated, given that the hypermarket is intended to replace, by incorporation, every kind of business,
large or small. Every new product that appears on the market has a place there, and unlike specialized businesses, in
the supercenter
every novelty is like a new song added to a performance. When, for instance, endives appear in the produce section, the customers rejoice and offer their commentary; and when a product that's usually in stock is missing, the winds of dismay, if not panic, begin to blow, as they say, among the customers. For those who have nothing to spend, which is practically the majority, the hypermarket also has a feast prepared: every so often, tired of seeing the circus from outside, they take it by force, attempting, diligently, to demolish it, and, ultimately, it's overrun.

Before getting out of the car, Nula takes the copy of the verses by Omar Kayyám from his briefcase and, folding the white pages carefully down the middle, he deposits them in the side pocket of his jacket. As he crosses the parking lot, from the sixth row parallel to the entrance, the sun seems stronger than it did during his siesta, possibly because of the sensation of increased heat from the warm asphalt, over which his obedient shadow, the sharply drawn silhouette that follows him, diminished by the position of the sun in the cloudless sky, is projected. And when he enters the coolness inside the building, the change in climate, which includes, in addition to the air conditioning, a continuous loop of saccharine movie soundtracks in the background—“Love Is A Many Splendored Thing,” just now—contributes, Nula remembers every time he walks in, to the sensation of passing from the air to the water, like when, as a teenager, diving into the river from the floating dock at the regatta club, he'd penetrate the subaquatic medium, completely different from the land above. But immediately, to the left of the entrance, a small crowd, somewhere between passive and unruly, calls his attention: a disorganized line, gathering and dispersing in accordance with the contained agitation of its constituents, mostly men, but also a few women, teenagers, and children,
from various social classes, judging by their clothes, causes Nula to wonder what new, magical product can produce that reconciliation of classes, genders, and generations, equalized by the common denominator of appetite. Apparently, certain sporadic irregularities in their behavior, motivated by the impatience and even the anxiety of some of its constituents, produces a momentary disturbance that disrupts the line, eventually reconstituted by the vigorous protests emerging from the crowd. Nula approaches a dark-skinned older man who watches the scene with cold, vaguely disdainful calm.

—What are they selling? Nula says.

—Tickets to the Sunday match, the man says, without even turning his head to look at the face of the person who's asked him the question, concentrating instead on his observation of the crowd's behavior, possibly with the intention of making use of his observations to find an advantageous place in line, or simply with the philosophical neutrality of someone corroborating with this scene a specific preconception of the human race. Nula hesitates a moment, observing for himself the people who swarm around the entrance to the small room, and then he takes a few steps away, toward the empty passageway, and taking his cell phone from his pocket, dials a number and waits a few seconds for an answer.

—Good afternoon, he says. This is Mr. Anoch, from Amigos del Vino. Is Ms. Virginia there, please?

—One moment, says a feminine voice. And after a few seconds: She's in a meeting. Can you wait ten minutes in the cafeteria, please?

—Of course, Nula says.

The voice on the other end says
thank you
and hangs up. The cafeteria is almost empty just now; the customers seem to prefer, being as they are brighter and more suitable for light fare, the two bars in the hypermarket, one at each end of the building, the farthest one near the phone bank, and the other just before the entrance to the food section, in a wide passageway, along with a
car dealership and, across the way, a few meters before the bar-cafeteria, a travel agency and a sporting goods store. Without intending to, or even realizing it, Nula sits down at the same table, in the same seat, and in the same position as Wednesday, on his way back from Paraná. The moment he sits down, a detail that he'd overlooked disorients him for a minute, and while amusing, insistently, though intermittently of course, it torments him: the guttural pigeon-like cooing, increasing in frequency and in amplitude as the paroxysm approached, that at once savage and tender cooing issuing, hoarsely, from Lucía's chest the night when he decided, crawling on four legs, almost in tears, from their bedroom, to leave their lives forever, the cooing that, as he listened to it for the last time, from the living room, seemed to have transformed into a growl, hadn't appeared the day before yesterday in Paraná, in fact no sound whatsoever had come from Lucía's chest. She might have clung to his body somewhat more tightly at the moment when, shuddering, he finished, but the unequivocal signal of pleasure from another, more remote from her own body than the distant stars, the impotent and painful fury of desire reaching its upper limit of incandescence as well as its momentary obliteration, the sonorous evidence rising from the dark jungle of her organs, had remained silent during her calculated and blatant pantomime.
And I felt guilty! She acts, thinks, and breathes for him. He commands her from a distance, like a remote-controlled robot. They're beyond united; they're a single entity in two separate bodies
. He's assaulted by a tenuous humiliation, and, almost immediately, by a battered, acquiescent relief. Remembering that he's in a cafeteria, he stands up and, walking toward the passageway, separated from the room by a moveable metal railing a meter high, parallel along the full length of the shelves, refrigerated or otherwise, displaying food and drinks, picks out a carbonated mineral water, and after paying for it and having the cashier open it, he puts several cubes of ice and a slice of
lemon, which he picks up with metal tongs from a receptacle, into a tall glass and, arriving at the end of the line, starts to cross the silent room, past the empty tables, toward his table. Halfway to the table, he stops, sprays some mineral water into the glass, shakes it, and takes a sip. And, while he's drinking, the following idea, like a surge of emotion, strikes him:
Everything is real, probably, but if we sometimes see things as unreal it's because of their transience. Only in dreams are things absolute, when in reality we see things as relative and transitory. And so, while dreaming, we believe more in the reality of the dream than in what we believe while awake in the reality of the world
.

When Virginia enters the cafeteria, Nula checks the time on his watch: it's ten to five. She moves through the tables, dressed in yellow linen, so slender, firm, beautiful, and decisive, that, while she appears to incarnate the feminine ideal
par excellence
, her energy has a kind of virility that Nula intuits to be somewhat uncontrollable, and beyond his own powers. Nula stands up and waits for her.

—What punctuality, Virginia says.

—For you, I'd wait for hours, Nula says.

—Please, no clichés, Virginia says.

—Should we have a drink? Nula says.

—There's no time; it's almost five, Virginia says.

—Did you remember that we had a date if everything went well? Nula says.