Scars. Juan José Saer

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СКАЧАТЬ made a gesture that meant absolutely nothing and threw himself on the bed. He stretched out face up and was snoring two minutes later. I went over to Tomatis’s desk and saw an open notebook, full of scribbles in the margin and a handwritten text that went as follows:

       To catch a rabbit, you need a point the rabbit can’t cross;

       to make him tired, you need a field for him to run;

       to make him die, you need a place, in the open country or in a tangle of branches, where death can find him.

       Only the light he carried inside himself was unreal.

      Then some blank pages I slid back with my forefinger, among them a loose sheet, handwritten, that said:

       The faint farmhouse, erased, moving away,

       the sparse habitations warmly illuminated,

       where pale-faced men walk from the table to the window,

       the beds filled with an animal smell,

       the melancholy bars with sticky floors where turbulent music plays,

       the government office and the police precinct, the courthouse,

       the parks abandoned in the rain,

       women face-down on mossy, arabesque rugs,

       the pavement and the smoke of sad chimneys, mixing with the rain,

       the white city hall, it’s dark windows,

       the slow buses traveling the empty streets,

       the murmur of a million minds constantly running,

       a slow disintegration

      The sound of the street door startled me, and I hid the sheet of paper inside the notebook. I left the notebook open on the table, the way I had found it. Tomatis appeared at the entrance to the room, followed by male and female voices. I heard the sound of high heels in the corridor. Tomatis stopped, surprised to see me. I realized that he had forgotten the invitation but remembered it right away. Then he glanced quickly from the bed to the table and, seeing the notebook open, gave me a suspicious look and went and closed it. Immediately behind him were three young women and a guy with glasses who was dressed in a blue jacket and wool pants. The women’s faces I recognized. The guy I had never seen in my fucking life. He was holding a raincoat. The women were folding up their umbrellas and one of them, wearing this madman green dress, untied a headscarf and started shaking out her hair, throwing it backward. Tomatis went and shook Barco, who sat up in the bed and looked around. Then he rubbed his hands over his face a few times and got up. One of the women, wearing a white raincoat cinched at the waist, carried a straw bag in her hand. Tomatis took it and put it on the table. He opened it and started taking things out: two bottles of whiskey and a pile of canned food. From the bottom he pulled a loaf of homemade bread. Two of the women disappeared farther into the house, and Tomatis followed them, so in the room the only people left were Horacio Barco, the girl in the green dress, and the guy with the raincoat folded over his arm. The guy was standing near the door; Barco next to the bed, his hands in his pockets; I was resting a hand on the table, near the cans and the bottles of whiskey; and the girl in the green dress stood in the middle of the room, with her green umbrella in one hand and her scarf and handbag in the other. I was about to say something, because no one was talking and the situation was getting awkward, but just then Tomatis and the other two women reappeared and started taking the cans and bottles to the kitchen. Barco crossed the room behind them and disappeared, so the only people left were the guy in the blue jacket with his raincoat folded over his arm, the girl in the green dress, and me.

      —Is it raining again? I ask.

      —A little, says the girl in the green dress.

      The guy with glasses stares but doesn’t say a thing. After a second, I gesture to the bed and the chairs and say:

      —Should we sit?

      The girl in the green dress shrugs and sits in a chair, without letting go of the umbrella or the handbag or the scarf. The guy with glasses stands there as if he was made out of stone. I sit down on the edge of the bed. I take out my cigarette pack and offer, but no one accepts. So I light a cigarette for myself and put the pack away. I bite the filter, my lips apart and head back slightly so the smoke doesn’t get in my eyes. If they don’t have a filter to chew on, cigarettes don’t interest me. What I really like is chewing the filter, not smoking. The girl in the green dress looks at me with her eyes wide open. I’m sitting on the edge of the table, my legs stretched out, my hands in the pockets of my raincoat, chewing the cigarette filter. My eyes are half shut and my head is back. The other guy is still standing there, not moving, and I’m tempted to go over and shake him to see if he’s dead or not. Just then Tomatis comes in, holding a glass.

      —Make yourselves comfortable, he says, looking at me. I would prefer it if your ass didn’t touch the table.

      The girl starts laughing.

      —Carlitos, she says, where did you get this chair?

      —I inherited it from my grandmother, Tomatis says. He goes over to the statue of a man with a raincoat over his arm and slaps him on the shoulder.

      —Don’t just stand there.

      The guy obeys and sits down.

      —You can go in the kitchen and serve yourselves what you want, Tomatis says. Gloria and la Negra are getting the food ready and Barco is eating it. He’s always hungry. Once he ate a whole cow.

      —I don’t believe it, says the girl in green.

      —Well, he left the horns and the tail, Tomatis says. He nods toward me. Angelito is a friend of mine from the paper. He writes the weather report. He’s responsible for this incessant rain.

      The woman in the white raincoat comes in and starts taking it off. Underneath she had on a sea-blue dress and a sweater of the same color. She finished taking off her raincoat and throws it on the bed. I saw she had hair on her temples, and I wondered if she would be too hairy underneath her clothes.

      —We’re eating in ten minutes, she said before going back.

      —Negra, said the girl in green, I can help if you need it.

      —Barco’s helping, said la Negra, and disappeared.

      Even though he was sitting, the guy with glasses still had his raincoat folded over his arm. He was on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, his raincoat folded over his arm and his arm resting on his thigh. Not a single muscle on his face was moving. I thought that if you went up behind him and took out the chair, the guy would stay in the exact same position, floating there. Tomatis was still standing, holding a glass. His beard had grown some since the morning, and his cheeks gave off blue, metallic reflections. His hooked nose was shining at the bridge.

      —Where were we? he says.

      —That he left the horns and the tail, says the girl in green.

      —So we were talking about the devil, Tomatis says.

      The girl in green laughs. Tomatis leaves the glass СКАЧАТЬ