Their arrivals were scattered, on their own or in small groups or pairs until the lunch gathered them under the pavilion, and now that the long meal has finished they scatter again across the courtyard or into the house. Gutiérrez and Leonor, along with the Rosembergs, have gone inside; Diana is sitting in a white lawn chair, sketching, under an umbrella that Gutiérrez himself set up so she could work in the shade; Riera and Nula are talking, still at the table, which has been cleared and cleaned completely by Clara, Violeta, and Amalia. After putting out the flames and cleaning the grill and taking the leftovers from the cookout to the large fridge, Faustino has disappeared; he’s actually sleeping a siesta in the shade, under a tree, an activity similar to what Tomatis is doing, lying on the lawn, under a tree, his head resting on Violeta’s thighs, her back resting, in turn, against the truck of a tree. José Carlos, Gabriela, and Soldi are talking on the bench at the back, and Lucía is playing in the swimming pool’s blue water, moving almost without making a sound. For now, she’s the only one not seeking the shade, but Diana hadn’t intended to either, and if Gutiérrez hadn’t set up the umbrella she would have continued sketching with her pencils, lost in her work, the afternoon heat forgotten. After setting up the umbrella, Gutiérrez glanced at the pad of paper on which Diana was sketching: there were fourteen blotches of color in an oval arrangement, plus one, the fifteenth, in which the color orange predominated, somewhat separated from the rest; the blotches, despite their abstraction, could vaguely suggest human shapes. Diana, realizing that Gutiérrez was looking at the sketch, explained, without looking up, It’s your guests sitting around the table. The different colors represent each person’s main qualities. Gutiérrez shook his head, asking, at the same time, And that orange blotch is the fire? Diana, still sketching, explained, No, that’s the owner of the house. Gutiérrez asked again, intrigued, And why the orange? And this time, Diana, looking him directly in the eyes, said, Among certain religions in India, it’s the color of surrender.
The rest of the planet is dying of hunger and all they know how to do is buy things; and they pretend that the whole rest of the world is like them; it doesn’t cross their minds that it’s possible to live differently from their way of life, which they insist they’ve chosen freely but which is clearly just a state in which they’ve been shipwrecked. And they’ve exported this disaster to the rest of the world, and everywhere they go everything has been left in ruins. And everyone who travels there from the most remote corners of the world, dazzled by the counterfeit shimmer they can make out from a distance, arrive finally at what they believed was an inexhaustible well of happiness but quickly discover its mistrust, its rejection, its exclusion. But I’m repeating myself, Gutiérrez says with an apologetic smile, unsure how he has once again, for the umpteenth time, punished his friends — Clara, Marcos, and Leonor — with his favorite diatribe, always spoken without hatred or violence or anger, but rather with a sense of irony, or reproach perhaps, as though he would have preferred that the place which, in reality, didn’t offer him such a bad reception, had been more similar to the idealized fantasy that had been constructed for him long before he entered its noisy and colorful aura.
The four of them are sitting in the darkness of the living room, cooled by the floor fan that hums in a corner, sending them, along its semicircular trajectory, periodic bursts of gentle air. On the low table between their chairs, on a metal platter, there’s a pitcher of cold water in which, when they serve themselves, ice cubes clink, along with the four tall glasses that they drank from, and in which there’re still some traces of water. The four of them have a common past that at this distance has become legendary, as if, now unchangeable, it had happened in a different dimension from the one they now occupy, made of space and time, of hesitation and uncertainty. And yet they appear to be seated calmly in their chairs, as if they were lodged in a segment of the eternal. That common past distinguishes them from the others, who wander around the courtyard, seeking a place in the shade, in order to let the wine settle maybe, and to recover from the exhaustion of the lunch and the demands of their digestion; or this is how Gutiérrez imagines it from the cool, dark living room, in any case. His friends, meanwhile, and the lover he had for a few now remote weeks, have in fact listened to him, though they’ve already heard him discuss the same topic many times before, with interest and patience, but also with a degree of skepticism: Marcos, for instance, who is a senator and has traveled widely and is in frequent contact with European parliaments, while he’s not unaware of the brutal contradictions of so-called late capitalism, thinks that many of the social gains made by rich countries wouldn’t be detrimental for the poorer ones. Leonor finds it inexplicable for Willi to find so many faults with a continent that can boast places as picturesque and pleasant as Saint Tropez, Nice, Liguria, and Marbella, with so many magnificent hotels and such impeccable service — anyone who’s seen the dawn in Cadaqués, even though its beaches are small and overcrowded, doesn’t have the right to complain about the European continent. Leonor thinks that Willi is too complicated, and that may have been one of the main reasons why she didn’t leave with him that time, so long ago now. Clara Rosemberg’s skepticism, meanwhile, has a different source than the others’: she gets the feeling that Gutiérrez himself, because of his tone, doesn’t really believe in the seriousness of his accusations, or that he considers them of secondary importance, in any case, and that he’d like his listeners to do the same, following rather his irony and his rhetorical distancing. Clara asks herself if his cruel critique of Europeans isn’t actually a subtle gesture of reverence toward his local friends. And, with her vague and enigmatic smile, she gives Gutiérrez a look of acquiescence, whose cause or significance Gutiérrez, somewhat perplexed, is not able to guess at.
Yes, Nula thinks, but I saw them in Rosario, on the sidewalk outside that awful house, with some strange and dubious people, the morning when I passed in a taxi. And, simultaneously, though he didn’t for a second doubt that he’d seen them, he still couldn’t believe it. At times, he was sure that it was them, Lucía silent and sleepy and Riera, as usual, cheerful and animated. Because it was winter, they were dressed warmly, Riera in a black overcoat and Lucía in a fur. The people they were talking to, in a circle, two women and a very young-looking man, were different from them in a way that Nula couldn’t quite define. Later, at other times, it was as if he’d only imagined them, or had seen them in a dream, or had been told about it by someone, or had read about it somewhere. But every time he passed the house, in a taxi or on the bus, and even on foot, during the day, when it seemed empty and closed, he would see them again, sharply, in the icy morning, speaking in a circle with their strange friends, and he would try to block out, without managing to, the intolerable images of what might have happened just before, inside, according to what the friend who’d pointed out the house had told him. And now Riera is saying something about how hard the separation with Lucía was for him, and that for months they’ve been trying to get back together. Yes, but I saw you with her in Rosario, on the sidewalk outside that awful house, Nula thinks again, more as a hurt protest than as an accusation. And he’s about to tell him, to make him remember, to make him know that he knows, but no matter how much he tries to give shape to and pronounce the words that would put his doubt to rest (Riera is incapable of lying), he isn’t able to, though his expression must betray his effort somewhat because Riera interrupts his conjugal disclosures and looks at him quizzically, and when Nula doesn’t catch on, he asks him directly: