— I think it’s you he’s smiling at, Nula whispers, but without concealing his comment very much, and Riera realized that they were talking about him and, with a hesitant smile, approaches slowly and stops in front of them, with his back to the pool.
— What kinds of nasty things are you saying? he says.
— None, actually, Nula says. Diana was asking me if we’re really in the company of the great corruptor of the wives of the bourgeoisie.
— At your service, madam, Riera says, staring at Diana. They exchange a quick, almost imperceptible smile that Nula nevertheless understands as a sign of recognition, as though they were two members of a secret society who, when they meet in public, have to perform certain ritualized gestures that only they know in order to identify each other. Or as if, after a long search, two creatures destined to find each other had met unexpectedly, recognizing each other in the act without the slightest hesitation. Though Nula believes he knows Diana deep down, a slight and momentary twinge of jealousy at once surprises and mortifies him.
— Well, he says. It’s not really as bad as all that.
— I could already tell on the phone that it would be worth meeting you, Riera says.
— But, you see, Diana is incorruptible, Nula says.
— It’s my primary charm, in fact, Diana says. Or am I wrong?
Nula, with considerable relief, realizes that the imperceptible smile that Diana just exchanged with Riera does imply a kind of recognition, but also a sense of defiance.
— Incorruptible bourgeois, Riera mutters with affected thoughtfulness. A contradiction in terms.
Nula and Diana laugh, and Riera follows with a brief cackle. Amalia comes out of the house with a platter of plates of olives, cheese, mortadella, and salami. She distributes them around the table under the pavilion, which has already been set for lunch, and turns back toward the house. Tomatis, José Carlos, and Gabriela approach the table and, in a highly educated manner, withdraw pieces of food with their fingers and bring them to their mouths. Soldi, completely wet, shaking himself off energetically to remove some of the water, comes out of the pool and stands a moment at the edge, unsure. Finally, seeing that the yellow lounge chair in which he sat on Thursday is empty, he hurries to it. From the other side of the pool, sitting in adjoining lounge chairs, Nula and his wife laugh with Doctor Riera. Soldi would like to approach, but he prefers to watch the scene from a distance, especially because Gabi has gestured warmly from the pavilion, where she talks with José Carlos and Tomatis, and, if he gets up now, he ought to walk over to them.
— An oxymoron. Like saying cold fire, Nula says after he manages to contain himself.
— An oxy-what? Riera says, alarmed.
— Nothing a man of science would understand, Nula says, with feigned condescension.
They laugh again. It’s the easy, expressive, and vaguely complicitous laughter that, as usual, the immediate affection for Riera, product of his physical presence and his spontaneous and tempestuous friendliness, creates in everyday interactions, and not only with women. Amalia comes out of the house again with a bottle of wine and an ice bucket, and behind her, carrying identical objects, Lucía and Gutiérrez appear. This arrival produces a subtle but unmistakable euphoria among the guests: the appetizers were merely a preface of the start of the feast that the procession of the three wine-bearers signals in earnest. For now, the guests, scattered around the pool, inside it, or under the pavilion, will serve themselves a glass of wine and pick at something from the plates at their own pace, until the announcement that the cookout is ready will gather them around the table, which has already been set. With a vague gesture, and in a very loud voice, Gutiérrez encourages his guests to serve themselves from the table, and though no one seems to pay any attention to him, as soon as he disappears into the house, José Carlos, Gabriela, and Tomatis each serve themselves a glass of wine and eat avidly from the plates, this time using toothpicks arranged in glass jars to pick at the cubes of cheese or mortadella, the salami slices or the oval-shaped green and black olives. Though he isn’t much of a drinker, Soldi looks curiously at the table from his yellow lounge chair, but doesn’t make a move to stand. The Rosembergs and Violeta are talking in the water, at the shallow end of the pool, and Nula is too busy with Diana and Riera, and somewhat too anxious in fact, to think about eating just now, and his anxiety heightens when he sees Lucía, rather than following Gutiérrez and Amalia back into the house, walking toward them and stopping next to Riera.
— It’s so great to see you, she says with a happiness that is paradoxical, given that it’s the first time in her life that she sees Diana, and that, five days before, in front of Gutiérrez, she’d pretended not to know who Nula was.
Nula is confused, and even somewhat worried. Lucía’s dependence on Riera could motivate her, with the hope of recovering him, to exceed her husband’s allusions and ostensibly humorous insinuations, especially with regard to their encounter Wednesday afternoon in Paraná. But after her excessive comment, Lucía falls silent and her expression turns serious and slightly disoriented, and Nula’s alarm takes on a hint of shame and compassion. It seems to him that Lucía is more lost in the world than she was the morning he first saw her, dressed in red, when he started following her, eventually penetrating her aura, and Riera’s, for months and months. He sees them from the outside now, and though they don’t seem much different, he interprets their words and actions in a way that seems more reasonable to him, though he’s unsure if it’s more accurate. Diana, meanwhile, smiles, urbane and expectant. I’m going to help Amalia with the salads, Lucía says finally, and with the gentle suddenness typical to her, she steps around Riera and heads to the kitchen.
— Should we go for a swim? Riera says.
— Why not? Diana says, getting up, and, without saying a word, Nula does the same. They move slowly and lazily toward the deep end of the pool and then, loudly, first Riera and then Diana and finally Nula, they dive in. For several seconds they move under the transparent water that transforms their solid bodies into fragmentary, unstable, inhuman blurs, but when their heads and shoulders emerge, though their faces are wrinkled, their hair disheveled and stuck to their head, and their eyes squeezed shut to keep the water from entering them, they recover a vaguely human appearance, as if the disintegration threatening from below lost efficacy on the surface, even though traces of its corrosive action, capable of deconstructing both the material and the illusion of reality, will linger for several seconds. And the three of them laugh, carefree, happy to be in the water where, paddling skillfully, they stay afloat and come together, in the middle of the pool.
Soldi, from the yellow lounge chair, watches José Carlos, Gabriela, and Tomatis, who, after picking at a few things on the plates distributed over the table, each serve themselves a glass of white wine and, walking slowly, leave the pavilion and head once again toward the back of the courtyard. Soldi follows them with his eyes until they stop under the trees and, turning around and observing from their position the house, the courtyard, the pavilion, and the pool all together, they begin to talk. They must be very far back, in the shade; he, on the other hand, lying lazily in the yellow lounge chair, feels the sun, which has dried him completely in a few minutes, causing the skin on his stomach to itch, and making him drowsy.