La Grande (43 page)

—You're not listening to me, Américo's voice says. Is everything alright?

—No, Nula says, with a quiet smile, I haven't come to terms with you doubting my intentions with Ms. Virginia, that's all.

—I'm just not buying it, period, Américo says, and swatting the air with the back of his hairy hand, he decides to continue: a typical, high quality wine fractionated here in the province and not in the production region would be a good business right now, because the taste for wine has always existed in this country, but because of all the noxious sludge that's been bottled here the customer of limited means, especially after all the crises, has stopped drinking wine and prefers a good cold beer, especially in the hot months. The good wines are too expensive, and the cheap ones are undrinkable. What's missing, therefore, is that one, Américo says, gesturing energetically but vaguely at something somewhere in the hypermarket, beyond the registers, and despite the vagueness of the gesture, Nula imagines the intersection in the beverage section where the publicity stand has been set up alongside the neat rows of red and white wine bottles, distinguished clearly from a distance because the label of the red wines is red and the white wines a pale green. The feeling of happiness has vanished, and commerce no longer offers the return of a world without reflection, and so he listens to Américo's ideas skeptically: first of all, after his experience with Aconcagua—
the pinnacle of table wines
, according to a radio campaign at the time—Chela won't let him try to build his own fractionator and, in his opinion (which is to say, his as in Nula's), the arrangement that Américo has with Amigos del Vino is less risky and more profitable because he can also count on the support of the owner, who is in fact a friend and who's incorporated him to the firm under especially advantageous conditions; and on the other hand, expensive wines have a better profit margin.

—Why do you want to build a fractionator of average wine, Nula says, if fine wines have a better margin and the risk falls totally on the central house? For us, everything is profit, it's a gift.

—What you lack is a sense of the social aspects of business, Américo says with a beatific smile that he accompanies with a slow
movement of his head both sideways and slightly upward, his eyes narrowed, meant to connote the sublime, and adding: With our whips we'll drive the merchants from the temple.

As though on cue, the background music, which had been Rififí, is interrupted, and the masculine voice of the booster announces:
For Holy Week, the Warden hypermarkets are hosting a raffle of freshwater and saltwater fish, both fresh and frozen varieties, Norwegian salt cod, tuna, or Gran Paraná pejerrey, for instance, essential for the banquets at the end of Lent
, and the music resumes.

As they leave the bar, they see that the crowd has now invaded
the supercenter
. Through the windows of the bar, which face the parking lot, Nula, while he talked to Américo, had been watching the cars pull in and drive around and around looking for an open parking space. The sounds of footsteps, of voices, of laughter, can only be distinguished when they issue from a nearby source, because as the source moves away the different sounds merge into a single hum that, in contrast to the ambient loop and the voice over the loudspeaker that interrupts it every so often, sounds like a dull, monotonous, and continuous hum, which, intermittently, is punctuated by a set of chords and a recitative. Moving slowly through the crowd, Nula can discern fragments of voices and laughter that almost immediately fade and disappear into the background. They cross the toy section, the electrical appliances, the kitchen supplies, they take a loop around the cheeses, around the prepared foods, and past the frozen produce, and after glancing quickly at the labels and the prices on the shelves of wine that comprise the hypermarket's typical stock, they turn toward the stand. Although it's ten of seven, Chela isn't there, but when they approach the stand, one of the girls tells them that she was already waiting for them but that she'd left again, saying that she'd be right back. Some five or six people are waiting for their turn to taste the wine, and another three or four already have a plastic cup in their hand,
apparently studying its contents, or simply waiting to be served a second time. Américo elbows Nula discreetly but enthusiastically so he'll look at all the bottles that are missing from the shelves, whites as well as reds, more than twenty altogether. At five after seven, Chela appears, pushing a cart with some things that she's picked out: two or three cleaning products, a small box of frozen salt cod, a small box of homemade ravioli, makeup, a small garden spade, and a necktie with red and blue angled stripes for Américo. She picks it up and shows it to him, and then she folds it in half and holds it up to his bearded chin, letting it fall against his chest, over the one he's already wearing, to see how it looks. Then she pulls away the tie, kisses him on the part of his face, near the cheekbone, where there is no beard, and puts the tie back into the cart. Nula watches them, at once sympathetic and sorrowful; he thinks about La India, alone for years, and about his father, lying on the cold floor of a pizzeria—the crumpled and bloody corpse that actually may not have been killed by the gunshots because the man who occupied it was already dead to himself, since the time of delirium and frenzy, long before the superfluous bullets reached him.

To pass the time, Nula accompanies Chela and Américo, who are heading back to Paraná, to their car. They get in line at a register, and when they walk out to the parking lot the warm and somewhat humid air sticks to their cheeks. Although it's already seven thirty, it's still not completely dark. In the west, above the city, an enormous, bright red stain extends, smooth and uniform, over the sky, and below, through the shadows on the ground, the lights of the waterfront are visible. Américo suggests, possibly with an implicit warning, that he should leave too, but Nula says that he prefers to stay a while longer, until after eight, in case the girls at the stand need anything. His eyes follow Américo's car as it drives away, and then he lifts his head toward the tense, brilliant stars in the dark blue sky. Ceaselessly, cars enter and exit the parking lot, they form
lines for gas at the service station, they drive around looking for an open space, and their occupants come and go with their carts, empty or full of merchandise, all distinct and very real in the evening, yet at the same time improbable and somehow vague. The extensive facade of
the supercenter
, with its many entrances, the one to the hypermarket, to the mall, to the multiplex, illuminates the dark air with its neon signs, its geometric, outward projections of light, its lamplights indicating the edges of the cement that separates the sidewalk from the parking lot. Nula goes back in through the multiplex, studies the show times, and sees that there are lines forming for the eight o'clock show. Then he passes through the cafeteria, which is now full, and observes the crowd from the entrance: the line that fills the passageway between the main room and the dishes and beverages; the customers who, leaving the registers, carry their loaded trays, moving slowly, uncertain and somewhat discouraged, looking for a table. Farther off, the small room where they were selling tickets to the Sunday match is closed, and a small sign taped to the wooden door announces:
TICKETS FOR THE
CLÁSICO
SOLD OUT
. A man and a woman practically running from the parking lot freeze, stupefied, when they see the sign. Nula walks into the hypermarket, and, moving slowly through the crowded aisles, without stopping once to look at any of the many products on display, eventually arrives at the stand and stops a certain distance away. The prospective tasters of the new line of table wines swarm around the counter. As she's serving a customer, the girl who offered Moro the wine, and who's seen him approach, gives him a friendly gesture, and so Nula walks up to her.

—Everything alright? he says.

—Perfect. There's barely enough to go around, the girl says.

—Do you need a hand? Nula says.

—No, no. Don't worry about us. Ms. Virginia is sending someone at nine to help us pack everything up. You can leave if you like, she
says, handing a cup of red wine to a man who was watching every one of her movements carefully.

Nula looks at his watch: it's five after eight.

—Alright, Nula says. I'll leave before the return of Affife.

The girl doesn't get the joke, but she laughs politely and starts to fill another cup, this time of white wine. Nula turns around and starts walking toward the exit. The infinite loop of musical soundtracks heard in every elevator of every luxury hotel, in every supermarket, in every mall, in the variety shows on planes and in airports, the infinite wave of saccharine music that has been assaulting the West, and probably the East as well, for decades, like a soft requiem for the slow extinction of a species dying from a plague of conformism punctuated here and there by a marketing campaign, the thin molasses propelled by a plethora of violins, at the very moment when Nula crosses the exit, is playing “The Godfather,” and as if he'd been infected, without knowing it, by the virus of that same plague, as he steps into his car, Nula starts, softly, humming the melody. Because he still has time, he decides to get in line for gas at the service station, which takes awhile, and then he drives on, not really knowing what to do. After crossing the road bridge, rather than continuing along the boulevard, he turns up the waterfront along the edge of the lagoon, all the way to Guadalupe. At a bend, he sees the water glowing through the trees; it makes him want to get out and he starts to slow down but immediately changes his mind and drives on. At the Guadalupe roundabout he turns west and then back onto the same road, to the south. Thirty blocks later he reaches the boulevard, and, two blocks west, the bar Déjà Vu, but because he can't park on the boulevard he turns at the corner, to the north, and parks halfway down the block. He walks slowly under the trees, in the warm night air. At nine fifteen on the dot he walks into the bar; Virginia is already there, not at a table but rather behind the counter, talking on the phone.

The bar is full, and although it's been open for over a year and Nula has passed it many times in his car, looking at it curiously, it's his first time inside. It's a simple and pleasant bar, with French posters on the ochre walls and wooden tables and chairs. It's full of young people—
a hip place
, Nula thinks with a hint of arrogance that he immediately regrets, and sidestepping the tables, which are all full, he walks toward the counter. Virginia sees him arrive, and as she talks on the phone she gestures for him to wait. As she talks she looks through the window at some vague spot on the dark boulevard, and Nula is able to examine her ample, firm body, her wide back and her well-proportioned, slender arms, their tanned, smooth skin revealing, discreetly, below the short sleeves of her marble-colored shirt, hard muscles. After a couple of minutes, Virginia hangs up.

—Muriel, my daughter; on Fridays she and her five friends all sleep over at someone's house, Virginia says. Like old ladies getting together without their husbands.

—Like some of them, enjoying the liberties of widowhood, Nula says.

—What are you drinking? Virginia says, using
tú
unexpectedly. It's on the house.

Nula, with a half smile, slowly shakes his head, unsure. Despite being a wine seller, he has a strong preference for more colorful, eccentric drinks, like Kir Royales, Bloody Marys, screwdrivers, Negronis, San Martín Secos, or Lemon Champs. Finally he decides:

—A Negroni, he says.

Virginia pours the liquors in a cylindrical glass, over three or four ice cubes, mixes them with a long-handled spoon, and, folding a paper napkin in half, puts the glass on top and slides it to the outside edge of the counter. Before touching it, Nula observes, admiringly, the deep red of the liquid mixture that Virginia has just prepared.

—Well? she says.

—Aren't we going to toast? Nula says.

Virginia pours a small amount of seltzer into a glass and raises it. Nula raises his own, and the glasses, when they touch, produce a faint, momentary tinging. They take a drink, and Nula, with a gesture of approval, pursing his lips, concentrating on the flavor of the drink, looks up slowly.

—Excellent, he says. I didn't know that you worked here, too.

—I don't work here. I'm the owner. Well, one of the owners. There's three of us, Virginia says. Him—she points to the waiter, serving a table—his wife, who should be here soon, and me. Do you mind if we wait for her five minutes before we leave?

—Of course, Nula says. I knew from the first time I saw you that you were a business man.

—No, Virginia says. The first time you saw me was a few years ago, at the enology course at the Hotel Iguazú. That's the secret that I wanted to tell you: that we already knew each other.

—Seriously? he says, laughing. You're joking. How could I not have noticed you?

—I was a little fatter then. And in some situations it's better to go unnoticed, Virginia says. I wanted to approach you, I was very attracted to you. But you seemed so serious back then. And besides, a pregnant girl came to see you two or three times. When I saw you the other day I recognized you immediately. You look better.

—I'm sure you do too. I can't imagine you looking better than you do tonight.

Virginia laughs lightly, but immediately her expression turns serious.