He pulls his cell phone from the straw bag on the ground, under the pavilion, rummaging briefly among the clothes, the pencil case, some things of Diana’s, and then, looking hesitantly around, walks to the white gate, dialing La India’s number as he crosses the courtyard and stopping in front of the gate when she answers.
— It’s your favorite son, Nula says when he hears his mother’s voice.
— I don’t have a favorite son, La India says. But I do have some adorable grandchildren. All four are here, because your brother and sister-in-law went to watch the Clásico at seven and then they’re coming for dinner.
— So it would be okay if we came by for them a little later than planned? Nula says, aware that the question is actually a rhetorical one for which the response he expects isn’t long in coming:
— It would take much longer than a single Sunday for me to educate them properly.
— Despite what a disaster I turned out to be?
— You didn’t turn out that badly, La India says. And, after a short pause: And to what do we owe the delay?
— Because it’s going to storm, our host, who is a very friendly man, took the gardener and the cook home so they don’t get rained on, and he asked us to wait for him so we can have a drink before we go, Nula says. And Diana is showing her sketches to a senator. The house is magnificent; it has an amazing courtyard and pool. He’d make a good match for you, mamá.
— If I wanted a boyfriend I’d find one for myself, La India says, laughing intensely.
— Admit that you like the idea, Nula says. So, we could come by later than we thought?
— Get here whenever you want, La India says. The less contact my grandchildren have with their perverse father, the better off they’ll be.
— You’re a rock, India. I’m sending you a big kiss.
— And I’m dodging it, La India says. Goodbye.
She hangs up. Nula stops moving, thinking, next to the white gate posts, tapping the now disconnected cell phone softly against the palm of his right hand. Finally he decides, opens the gate, and goes out into the street. The cars, shaded by the large trees, seem somewhat more dusty than when they arrived from the city late that morning. Nula travels the few meters that separate him from the corner, and, stopping at the intersection, he looks two blocks down, at the asphalt road, on which, toward the city, numerous cars are driving, most of them returning from a weekend or a Sunday in the country, but there are also a few trucks, loaded with fans waving the flags of the clubs that will shortly battle over the Clásico. Nula disregards the cars and his gaze shifts toward the embankment where, three days before, during the Thursday siesta, he talked a while between cars with Soldi and Gabriela Barco. The weather had been good that day: for the first time in several days the sky was very blue, and there were immense, incredibly white, and apparently motionless clouds scattered among sections of open sky, but by Friday morning they had already disappeared. Nula takes a few steps along the sandy ground in the direction of the road, scanning the sky to the southeast; if there’s a storm, it’s sure to come from that direction: and he can just make out, beyond some tall trees, on the river side, the tips of dark clouds from which seem to come, precipitous and fleeting, numerous lightning bolts, along with the thunder that they engender, more sharp, prolonged, and audible than the weak spark of the distant flashes. If the wind picks up, it’ll be on top of us before long, Nula thinks, and as he thinks this he watches the movement of the trees behind which the clouds are gathering. He turns around slowly and, after traveling the meters of street that separate him from it, pushes the gate open and enters the courtyard, closing it behind him. He can now see that Tomatis, Clara, Marcos, and Diana have gathered in the middle of the courtyard, standing, enthusiastically discussing the sketchbook. As he walks up to them, Marcos is saying:
— The problem today is, who legitimizes the legitimizers?
— I agree, Nula says when he reaches them, though his gaze still scrutinizes the trees in the courtyard to see if they display the same movement as those on the distant mountain. There’s nothing for now: not one leaf moves on the highest, sunny branches, and so Nula leans over to see the sketch that the others are looking at. It’s the pencil sketch of him and Riera, sitting under the pavilion, perfectly recognizable despite their faces being invisible because Diana has drawn them from the back without their knowledge, except in the final minutes, when they invited her to go swimming and she asked them to pose a while longer so that she could finish.
— Wonderful, he says, and kisses Diana on the cheek. But what actually attracts his attention just now is the racket coming from the pool, and so, moving away from the group — he and Diana will talk about the sketches tonight when they look at them — he walks up to the edge of the water: Riera and Violeta are playing with a multicolored ball, standing on opposite sides of the shallow end, throwing it back in forth and trying to keep the other one from catching it. It’s immediately obvious that Riera is dominating the game, and that rather than giving Violeta an advantage he’s happy to beat her ostentatiously, which makes her laugh and protest simultaneously, as if that minor vexation caused her a degree of pleasure.
— Sadist victimizer! Nula yells to Riera, who still hasn’t seen him.
— And if she likes it? Riera says, and because he turns around to say this, Violeta takes the opportunity to throw the ball at his head with an impotent fury that causes the multicolored sphere to drop halfway along its trajectory, in the middle of the pool.
— I forfeit, she says, and with heavy steps, intended to overcome the resistance of the water, she moves toward the metal ladder and starts to climb up. Riera makes a sudden lunge and, before Violeta has finished climbing, steps up onto the edge of the pool, splashing Nula’s naked legs. The multicolored ball continues floating on the water, rocking violently, but always at the same point on the surface of the water. Riera sits on the edge of the pool, shaking his head to dry the water from his thick, soaking wet, chestnut hair.
— So she declared you persona non grata, Nula says.
— Yes, and since you’ve seen the house you’ll know that it’s not like there isn’t plenty of room, Riera says.
Nula decides not to register the allusion, opting instead for mocking laughter. And then: You’ll see that everything will work out.
— It practically is already worked out, Riera says with unusual severity.
Violeta approaches them along the edge of the pool.
— I’ve had my share of aquatic pleasures for the day, she says, insinuating that Riera’s behavior has spoiled them, but apparently happy that this has happened. She continues toward the group talking between the pool and the house. Riera sees the cell phone in Nula’s hand.
— Were you about to call someone? I can disappear, if you want, he says.
— It doesn’t matter; I don’t have a private life anymore, Nula says. Ignoring the effect that his sibylline words have caused, he studies, curious, without anxiety, the trees at the back: there seems to be a faint undulation among the highest branches. It’s coming, the storm, he says, even more ostentatiously disinterested in the mocking, complicit smile that Riera is giving him. It’s difficult to tell how much Riera knows about his visit to Paraná, and though he knows that Riera would tell him immediately and that if he doesn’t do so now it’s because it’s not the right time, he has no desire to reenter their aura, like five years before, when, as he was coming out of the bar, he bumped into the girl in red and started to follow her. The magnetic aura that surrounded them, more luminous and vivid than his own life, confronted with the bitter roughness of possession, during the Wednesday siesta, has dissipated. Nula thinks that, if he wanted to, he could be the one to arrange events according to his fantasies, although he owes them too much to want to do that. But a thunderclap, much closer than the previous ones, pulls him from his thoughts. The thunder causes Riera to look up as well and scan the peaceful blue sky, in which not the slightest sign of a storm is visible. Nula puts the cell phone in the straw bag, under the pavilion, and then takes the umbrella out of the base, folds it, can leans it up against the wall, under the pavilion, near the grill. Then he returns to the edge of the pool, from which Riera watches him, intrigued, and starts folding up the lawn chairs. Riera stands up and does the same with the ones around him and then follows Nula submissively as he leans the ones he’s already folded against the wall of the pavilion, next to the umbrella, to protect them from the rain. When they’ve put away the last of them they walk out of the pavilion and toward the others, who continue talking, apparently unaware of them, in the middle of the courtyard. When the second thunderclap rumbles, Diana closes the sketch pad and puts it carefully in the straw bag. Now everyone is scanning the sky, and though they don’t see anything in it that indicates a storm, they all see the momentary flash of a lightning bolt and notice that the tall trees on the sidewalk are starting to shake, just as the white bars of the gate open for Gutiérrez, who, after closing it, moves toward them at a run, but in slow motion, pointing up and back, as if he was being chased. His guests watch him, amused but also somewhat surprised because they wouldn’t have expected, from him, the kind of parodic behavior that diminishes his mystery and reduces him to the banality of every other mortal. Only Nula and Tomatis intuit, though still vaguely, that this is also a reconstitution, the playing out of something lost that he’s not actually trying to recover but that he stages, purely as an intimate game, in the theater of his disenchanted imagination. When he reaches the middle of the courtyard, a heavy thunderclap makes the house, the pavilion, the trees, and the earth vibrate, disturbing the blue water in the pool, and suddenly the light turns livid and the air darkens.