They started walking slowly around the courtyard, stopping every so often for no apparent reason, shooting the breeze, with ironic indolence but also with long intervals of silence that were no longer uncomfortable. They didn’t talk about their mutual past, but rather seemed to include it, tacitly, in the present. It was obvious that, unlike so many others, including Gutiérrez, Escalante was impervious to nostalgia. A few months before, Rosemberg, somewhat maliciously, had said, It’s hard for Sergio to admit his altruism and it horrifies him that others might speculate about his thoughts and feelings. And on top of that he has a personal ethic that no force in the world could deviate even a millimeter.
It was strange to see them walking around the courtyard, especially Escalante, carrying an enormous flashlight that early in the bright morning. Gutiérrez pointed it out: You’re like Diogenes the Cynic, he said, always looking for someone. Escalante laughed and was about to bring his hand shyly to his lips to hide his ravaged teeth, but he stopped himself, possibly remembering what had happened the previous Tuesday at the fish and game club, when Gutiérrez took out his false teeth to show him that he had nothing to be ashamed of. It may have been that gesture, and not their past friendship, that had inspired the gift of the two fresh rather than frozen fish; the same gesture that confused Nula so much seemed to have an unmistakable significance for Escalante.
Gutiérrez walked him to the asphalt road, and they stood a while longer without crossing. People looked at them curiously, but they didn’t notice. Every so often, Escalante would greet, not altogether demonstratively, an acquaintance passing in a car or a bus, or on foot or on horseback. They seemed used to his distracted laconism, in fact they seemed to consider it admirable.
The first to arrive, just after eleven and even before “the family,” real or imaginary, are Clara and Marcos Rosemberg. They’ve brought two enormous alfajores, made, according to Marcos, that same morning. Amalia picks them up from the pavilion table and takes them to the kitchen, where they’ll stay fresher. Clara and Marcos go into the house and soon return in their bathing suits and sit down in the sun, in the lounge chairs (Faustino unfolded three others around the pool, and the bright colors of the canvas reverberate in the sun), and a few minutes later Gutiérrez comes out of the house, dressed only in shorts and clogs, and sits down to talk with them alongside the large, rectangular pool in which the water, apparently motionless because no breeze is blowing, but in reality an unstable, constantly churning mass, sparkles. Not surprisingly, the first topic of conversation is the visit that Sergio Escalante paid him yesterday. Marcos considers it surprising, but Clara only smiles vaguely, or, better yet, only expands the vague and rather absent smile that, for years, whenever she’s in public, she wears constantly. Her sixty-three years, though they’ve deeply marked the lines on her face and have partially grayed her blonde hair, haven’t managed to thicken her youthful silhouette, her thin but well-shaped limbs, her flat stomach, her delicate, subtle breasts. César Rey, Marcos’s best friend, while he was her lover (the only one Clara had in her life), called her Flaca, which is to say, Skinny. The two of them lived together in Buenos Aires for several months, but one day, El Chiche Rey drunkenly fell, or threw himself, under a train, and she came back to the city and to Marcos. They had a second son, and now devote themselves, with punctilious affection, to their grandchildren. Marcos vibrates with politics, and Clara, who before she was thirty intensely but contradictorily loved two men simultaneously, passes through life distant but friendly, smiling and calm, without anyone, anyone at all, not even Marcos, who trusts her completely, managing to know what she’s really thinking. Her conversation is at once pleasant and evanescent, so much so that it can sometimes seem disjointed and even mysterious. Often what she says sounds like an intimate thought spoken aloud, as though it had escaped her. And her sense of humor is subtle but cryptic; most of the time only her own smile, and not her interlocutor’s, widens. As he talks to Marcos, Gutiérrez observes her discreetly every so often: after two or three minutes, she detaches from the conversation. And suddenly, without losing her vague smile or her calm movements, she stands up slowly and, taking a few steps during which she rearranges her adolescent breasts within the top of the two-piece bathing suit of rough fabric, stops at the edge of the pool, and after a short hesitation, dives in loudly. Marcos and Gutiérrez stop speaking and watch her: emerging from the bottom, after a few seconds of blindness, she opens her eyes and shakes her head a few times; the water, altered by the dive, trembles around her, and as though she’s trying to calm it, Clara falls still. Only her head and part of her shoulders rise above the water; the rest of her body remains submerged. To keep herself afloat in the deep section of the pool, without moving, Clara slowly waves her arms and legs, or better yet, what only at moments appears to have the shape of arms and legs, because the submerged portion of her body seems to have transformed into a series of shapeless, unstable blotches which the majority of the time don’t even resemble human forms, shaking as what they appear to be: exaggeratedly pale, disconnected, fragmentary shapes.
The arrival of Tomatis and Violeta finds the three of them in the water. It’s around noon, and Faustino has already lit the fire; with his back to everyone, he busies himself with it. Tomatis shakes a bag from the hypermarket (the W emblazoned on it is red), and shouts, with tremendous satisfaction, even before saying hello, This is for after lunch! but instead of revealing the contents of the bag, wraps it around the object it contains, apparently a rectangular box.
— Does it go in the fridge? Gutiérrez says, coming out of the water, intrigued.
— Not at all, Tomatis says. But somewhere cool and humid, yes. How’s it going? What a beautiful morning, no?
Violeta arrives behind him, waving silently. Clara and Marcos come out of the pool and, following Gutiérrez, walk across the grass, against which the midday sun falls steeply, to meet them. They exchange greetings and observations but they don’t touch because Violeta and Tomatis maintain a comfortable distance from the three dripping water. Suddenly they hear the engine of a car, apparently moving slowly, and when they look in that direction they see Soldi’s car (Soldi’s father’s car, actually) parking next to Violeta’s, in front of the gate. At that same moment, a man on horseback passes behind the parked cars at a slow trot and disappears behind the trees — enormous rosewoods — that border the sandy dirt road. The group pauses, waiting for the newest guests to get out of the car, cross the gate, and enter the courtyard, but, apparently remembering his duties as owner of the house, Gutiérrez advances and starts walking obsequiously toward the entrance. The arrival has produced some curiosity in Faustino as well, and he turns around and, with his back to the flames, advances a few steps, staring at the white bars of the gate. Finally, Soldi and a stranger get out of the front seat, and Gabriela Barco from the back, each one slamming their respective door. That’s José Carlos, Gabriela’s friend, Tomatis whispers to the Rosembergs, who nod their heads affirmatively, thanking him in this way for the information. At a distance, Gutiérrez and the three visitors carry on a conversation that is inaudible to those watching from the courtyard, by the swimming pool, a few steps from the grill. But everyone imagines that it’s a set of conventional displays of affection, the mundane sounds to which some sacrifice is required at any party, before beginning a conversation worthy of the name. Gutiérrez hurries to open the gate and leans over to receive a quick kiss on the cheek from Gabriela before she introduces her friend, while Soldi, taking advantage of the presentation ceremony, walks around them and hurries toward the others, their motionless, unrecognizable shadows gathered at their feet because of the perpendicular position of the sun, smiling, watching him.