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— Right here, right here! Tomatis shouts, pounding his chest, standing at the edge of the pool, looking toward the darkened sky, and speaking to the endless series of long lightning strikes and the deafening, continuous thunder that, for a while now, has been shaking everything, creating a tremor in the rainy shadow of the evening. And then: If you exist, swine, hit me right here! I’m defying you! I’m talking to you, coward!

— Don’t pay any attention to him, he’s quoting Flaubert again, Violeta says to the group, which is surprised by Tomatis’s suddenly theatrical behavior, jumping from the table at the edge of the pavilion and berating the turbulent sky.

At that moment, Tomatis stops yelling and returns to the table, calmly, with a satisfied smile.

— You see? he says. He doesn’t exist. And picking up his glass of whiskey, he shakes it a moment, clinking the ice against the glass, and takes a long drink.

— Either he doesn’t exist or he’s gone deaf, Marcos offers sententiously.

A dense, loud rain has been falling continuously for a while now, multiplying its intensity with every volley of thunder and lightning. The southeast wind brought with it a thick curtain of black clouds that completely obscured the sky along the entire visible horizon, and though by now the wind had calmed down considerably, or perhaps for that same reason, the storm had settled in, dumping endless, thick streams of water, pierced constantly with electricity and noise, over the evening. Gutiérrez suggested that they move indoors, but his guests preferred the pavilion, which protected them from the rain while at the same time allowing them to enjoy the delicious coolness of the air after the sweltering afternoon. Assisted by Nula and Violeta, Gutiérrez prepared the table and served them the cold leftovers from the cookout, bread and butter, and a few bottles of red wine. So that she wouldn’t have to put the prosthesis on her arm again, Nula prepared chorizo and steak sandwiches for Diana, or put pieces onto a dish from which they both ate. Eventually, Gutiérrez announced that Amalia had made a cake that she hadn’t dared serve after the alfajores, and which she’d left for that night. Violeta brought it out — Nula took care of the plates and the dessert utensils — and Gutiérrez appeared last with a large ice bucket that, when he brought them out, fit two bottles of French champagne very well. They made their trips to and from the house at a run, forced to cover the food, and the cake in particular, with white napkins, but they themselves arrived soaked, though this didn’t seem to bother them much, just the opposite: judging by their happy laughter when they arrived, the euphoria with which they distributed the food and the bottles, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, thanks to the effects of the wine, which had been partially spent over the hot afternoon. After the first glass of champagne, when Gutiérrez moved to serve him a second, Tomatis put his hand between the mouth of the bottle and the top of the glass and asked:

— Do we have anything stronger, by chance?

And so when he finished pouring the second round of champagne, Gutiérrez ran into the house, returning eventually with a bottle of whiskey, a dish of ice cubes, and several glasses. And now, just as Tomatis finishes his sip of whiskey, after clinking the ice against the glass, hearing Marcos’s comment, Diana, gesturing vaguely with her head to the sky, the night, the storm, adds thoughtfully:

— If he’s gone deaf he definitely wouldn’t have heard him over this racket.

— Even within the most deathly silence he cannot hear, Marcos says with an apodictic and deliberately theatrical seriousness, and after taking a sip of champagne, savoring it ostentatiously, raising his voice to Gutiérrez with worldly confidence, says, Willi, darling, this champagne français—and he exaggerates the French pronunciation of the two words — is a disaster!

They exchange an ironic, knowing look. Of the ones that Gutiérrez knew back then, to whom he’d granted such prestige, Marcos is most similar, even physically, to how he was when he knew him: the same blonde hair, thinner and more faded now, and the same blonde beard, now more white than golden, which, at a gentle slant, encircles his mouth.

— I save it for special occasions, Gutiérrez says, and Nula, who is watching him, smiling, vaguely fascinated, thinks that this must be true, but that what Gutiérrez considers a special occasion probably doesn’t have anything to do with what most people consider as such. Marcos smiles, less pleased with the courtesy than with some mysterious double meaning that he seems to have glimpsed among the conventional words. Ubiquitous, omnipresent, the storm echoes over the courtyard, over the fields, over the night, and the eight people who sit or stand at the table under the illuminated pavilion seem to be staging a realist play, to the point that their words issue with celerity and precision from their lips, as if they hadn’t needed formulation inside themselves beforehand, being as they were replicas of a previously written text that they’d already memorized.