— I did it for him, Lucía says. He’s so kind.
— Your father, Nula says.
Lucía doesn’t answer. In the silence that follows, Nula, though he regrets what he’s just said, also senses a charge of immanence between them. Nula secretly observes Lucía in the rear-view, and in the fragments of face he can see — her eyes, which are on the street, are outside his visual field — part of her right cheek, her lips, her chin, and the portion of her dark hair that covers her ear and half her cheek, he thinks he sees a slightly theatrical expression of determination, something a grave mission, or a sacrifice, would demand. Finally, they arrive. Of the many homes in the highest sections of the park, all surrounded by gardens, Lucía’s is among the largest and the most well cared for, with a good view of the river, and sheltered at the back by a grove of trees.
— It’s my mother’s house, Lucía says when they’re outside the car and she sees Nula staring at the white facade, the balconies, the varnished doors, the tile roof, the white slab path that leads to the house and bisects the immaculate garden and lawn. I moved in with her when I came back from Bahía Blanca. Come in, there’s no one here. She doesn’t get back till Friday from Punta del Este, and the baby won’t be dropped off till five.
Nula doesn’t interpret those last words as a supplementary incentive to accept her invitation, not only because it would be superfluous, but also, and especially, because he’s busy interpreting the second thing Lucía said when she got out of the car: when I came back from Bahía Blanca, which he takes to mean, when I got fed up with everything you already know about and moved here with my son. Despite the fact that, objectively speaking, the decision was a reasonable one, it’s difficult, if not impossible, for Nula to imagine Lucía without Riera. In his memory, they’re always together, they represent a kind of combined existence, a single entity with two bodies, a complex mechanism whose movements, though difficult to predict, could be mapped out, represented systematically, its behavior described, once its particularities have been observed, repeating continuously, without being necessarily, if the problem does in fact have a solution, unexplainable. When they’re inside, Lucía locks the front door, and Nula recalls the first time he saw her and followed her to her house after she’d walked around the block. The last thing he knew about her that spring afternoon was that, after going inside, she’d locked the front door. For the rest of the day the tiny metallic sound of the lock had echoed insistently in his head. And now, after hearing a similar sound, he’s inside with her.
— Do you want a drink? Lucía asks.
— No, Nula says, distracted.
Lucía laughs quickly, and Nula, avoiding her gaze, half smiles. He’s just been overcome by a question that comes back to him over and over, less a problem than a riddle with no answer or insight or threat: How long does an event last, not as it’s measured by a clock? How long is a day for an ant, or, in the material world, how long does the sound of a coin hitting the floor last? Does it last only briefly and disappear forever, or does it vibrate indefinitely, does it have the same inextinguishable persistence common to everything that happens? Or does the totality of existence recommence at every instance of every event, as negligible as it may be, from nothing, its essence composed of perpetual, flashing intervals, infinitesimal and innumerable by any calculus that we know or that can be known? And this thing, which years earlier he wanted so badly to happen, in vain, and which is happening now, does it live and die fleetingly, like a momentary spark, or, to the more refined observer, does it last, at the same cadence and velocity as the birth of a star that burns for an equally fleeting, incalculable moment before it’s extinguished forever?
— Come on, let’s go up, Lucía says, and turns toward the stairs. Nula follows her, hanging back a step so as to observe, in anticipation, the body already intending to abandon itself to his whims, but she slows down, waiting for him to come up next to her, and as they start up the stairs each knows that the other knows what’s about to happen, so they don’t speak, or even look at each other. Only when they reach the bedroom, next to the bed, does she say, in a low voice, I owed you this, and then starts to undress.
For the first time in his life, Nula enters her, exploring the dark jungle of her tissue as though with a sensitive, vibrating probe, piercing the heavy silence of the organs that with exact and constant discipline, through some inexplicable design, sustain the attractive shapes that, for a given period, before disintegrating into darkness, giving way for the next wave fighting its way out, shimmer, fugitively, in the light of day. Despite the frenzy, the violent contortions, the pleasure of the skin, the hard and prolonged embraces, the damp caresses and the moans, Nula understands, in the minutes after they finish, when they are lying on their backs next to each other, that Lucía’s gift has come too late, and that she’s also thinking something similar. But neither one says anything. As a courtesy, Nula represses his usual impulse to jump out of bed, get dressed, and disappear, which takes over whenever he finishes the sexual act, and which is stronger than usual, and though he needs to piss, he refuses to let himself move even for that. His disappointment has been physical too: when he penetrated her, Lucía’s cavity offered no resistance, as though he’d entered a hole too large and formless, whose walls were too distended to hug his penis — a vast and empty cave. Ever since the day he saw her for the first time, the impossibility of possessing Lucía’s body had mythologized it, and his disappointment, which he tries at all cost to hide, makes him incredibly sad, though he tries to find a rational explanation for it, which translated into words would be more or less the following: We suffer the illusion of sameness, but five years ago it would have felt different because our bodies, and therefore our sensations, were too. It’s possible that childbirth distended the tissue, or maybe I’m accustomed to another kind of feeling compared to what I felt today. But the most likely explanation is that despite the apparent constancy that we take for granted even the most private corners of our being, corporeal or not, have changed and will continue to change till we become unrecognizable, especially to ourselves.
— Are you going to the cookout Sunday? Lucía asks.
— I think so. Either way, I already have the wine I’m planning on taking in the car, Nula says.
— We didn’t see each other today, of course, Lucía says.
— Of course, Nula says. But we should call each other tú; it would be strange for me to use usted with you, Nula says.
Lucía laughs again, the same quick laugh as before, when they’d just come in, but this time Nula senses a hint of resignation, almost bitterness, in it. He presses himself closer to her, wraps his arm over her shoulders, and pulls her in, possibly to compensate for his disappointment but most likely to conceal it, caressing her earnestly, but excessively, because he feels a genuine affection for her. But Lucía seems indifferent to his embrace, already thinking of something else. Nula asks her what, and she answers simply, without any apparent emotion, that she came to Bahía Blanca with her son two years ago, more or less, and she has sporadic encounters with Riera, who comes every so often to see his son, but it’s impossible to live with him all the time. There’s no denying it, Lucía says, he’s a monster. And, curiously, Nula realizes that when she says this, instead of anger, there’s a spark of malicious sympathy in her eyes, which stop for a fraction of a second as they wander over the immaculate ceiling. Nula laughs: I have no doubt about that whatsoever, he says, and Lucía laughs too, in a way that makes Nula think that she’s still in love with him and that, like the complications of their relationship, the separation must have had multiple interpretations and causes, and now Lucía is telling him that he, Riera, likes Nula so much, that he always talked about inviting him to spend a season with them in Benvenuto when they were still together, but she couldn’t take it any longer and it came down to giving in or leaving. Of course, Nula thinks, and the images that provoke this rise in his memory, painful as a burn, but I saw them outside that awful house in Rosario that morning from the taxi.