— Look. The hummingbird.
Everyone stops speaking and turns their heads toward the yellow-flowered bush; even Riera, who had been sitting with his back to that section of the courtyard, twists around and looks: flapping continuously, the bird’s tiny body hovers in the air in front of a yellow flower while its beak is inserted into it. Its vertiginous flapping creates a doubly surprising effect, in contrast with the utter stillness of the courtyard, the trees, the lawn, the blue water in the pool, now that no body or breeze disturbs it, and in particular of the human figures, frozen in various positions, their gaze directed at the yellow bush and the tiny body frantically shaking its wings to neutralize the force of gravity. The people, alive as of a few seconds and now transformed into petrified effigies of themselves, the garden, and the house with all its rooms, and what is beyond its limits, streets, paths, towns, rivers, cities, the world, which issue no sound, no movement, are like an elaborate backdrop, worthy of the legendary magic of the hummingbird, which appears suddenly, with the regularity of the constellations, in their gardens and disappears again just as quickly, like a mirage or a vision. The totality of the world seems to be concentrated, for several minutes, in one of its parts, winged and bright, and yet, despite its fame, all of the energy that it draws with its beak from the yellow flower is consumed at the very moment it’s obtained because of the exhausting flapping with which it fights against the terrestrial pull. The curious stillness of the bipeds who have conquered verticality nevertheless contains an element of cruelty, as they delight, from their comfortable position on the ground with their vigorous feet and legs, in the beauty of the spectacle. As indifferent to the pain of others, Tomatis thinks, as the Roman masses, which included the emperor, before the portentous blood of the gladiators and the martyrs. But the desperate effort of its wings and the eagerness with which its beak enters and exits the yellow flower give that beauty a tragic element that overcomes its decorative futility.
As though its movements were discontinuous, their trajectory escaping the human eye, the bird moves from flower to flower without needing to obey the laws of space to do so, or as though it had been allowed to travel by means of sudden temporal cuts as compensation for the entropy produced by its constant flapping, until, suddenly, it shoots up into the sky and disappears among the trees. The statues into which its admirers had been transformed take on life again, once again endowed with movement, with the gift of speech, of laughter, of surprise. They seem to congratulate each other for the fleeting apparition — already an image of dubious reality in their memories — that they’ve just seen. Gutiérrez tells his guests:
— He appeared earlier than usual today.
— Because a storm is coming, Tomatis says.
Faustino concurs with an affirmative gesture of his head, after which the visitors from the city, through the silent confirmation of a representative of the rural zone, allow themselves to take Tomatis’s sententious assertion seriously, knowing that his taste for parody, for comic effect, for witty retorts, which have become a kind of second nature for him, are by now so intrinsic that sometimes not even he himself seems to have access to the less predictable corners of his infinite internal jungle.
At around six, though it was still sunny, and, at least from the courtyard, not a single cloud was visible in the blue sky, the sound of distant thunder could be heard, and because Amalia and Faustino had to leave, Gutiérrez offered to take them, but he insisted that his guests wait for him to return. Shortly before, Soldi had taken José Carlos and Gabriela to the city, because José Carlos was returning to Rosario that night and Gabriela had decided to go with him. Now, when the sound of Gutiérrez’s car can no longer be heard, his guests have gathered around (or inside) the swimming pool, waiting for the storm. And yet, apart from the thunder, which gives no indication of approaching, there’s no other sign of it: the afternoon is sunny and peaceful, and there’s no breeze at all. None among the people remaining in the courtyard seem at all worried about the development of the weather. The three couples plus Riera have scattered as a result of their conversations and their movements in the following way: Tomatis and Clara Rosemberg sit on the lawn, talking, in the shade projected at that hour by the house over a section of the courtyard; Riera and Violeta are playing in the water, and Diana is showing Marcos her sketch pad. Only Nula is alone, at a distance: he’s resting in the shade, in the same chair that, after lunch, Gutiérrez set up for Diana under an umbrella. Though he can see the courtyard, the pavilion, the pool, and can see or hear the others splashing in the water, it’s as though, as he thinks about Gutiérrez, he’s become absent: You’d have to include the relationship he has with his employees, even more mysterious because they actually didn’t meet that long ago, and yet there seems to be a certain familiarity, if not complicity, between them. It’s as though practical matters were also of secondary relevance in that relationship, and he applies the same elusive standards with them as he does for everything else.