To Washington, if he has understood correctly, which is somewhat unlikely, as our friend Cohen’s subtlety in weighty questions is well-known, and he doesn’t even possess the rudiments that the university, spontaneously clearing any number of paths, supplies every student, not to mention the timely remunerations that, at the end of every month, help purge the spirit of material preoccupations that often disturb the progress of the syllogism, in short, if he understood correctly, the horse, having been declared an instinctive being, would be prohibited from stumbling, for the very reasons of instinct, which is considered pure necessity, while all of this is assumed only if you take the stumble, as our friend Barco clarified, in the sense of an error or mistake, not merely an accidental or external occurrence, but rather an internal contradiction in the horse, between the objects in question and the unexpected failure of the execution. Is he on track? Does the absence of an objection authorize him to continue? Yes? Alright, he will continue.
And so on. He, Washington, no? thought he understood the issue. Here, ostentatiously, almost paternally, the Mathematician grabs Leto by the left arm, to protect him from the aggression of a car that’s coming down the cross street, driving threateningly from the previous block, where it had accelerated, after crossing the intersection, according to the habitual system of motor vehicle conduction in rectangular cities: brakes and deceleration before the corner, accelerator after the intersection, reduction of speed midway down the block, and so on successively, which gives the system, bearing in mind that the length of the blocks is more or less constant and despite its contradictory principles, a highly regular nature. Over Leto’s head the Mathematician, in one second, analyzes the facts gathered by a glance that scrutinizes the cross street to the west: the cars appear well-adapted to the brakes/accelerator system, and the three approaching at the crossing with San Martín, one behind the other, judging by the unvarying distance that separates them in spite of the decreasing velocity of the first, appeared set, if they maintained the rate of reduction, to stop and allow the cars arriving perpendicularly down San Martín and the pedestrians crossing the intersection to pass, so that the Mathematician, decisive, drags Leto by the arm, making him stumble when they cross the cable guardrail into the street and forcing him to increase the extension and speed of his steps while they cross, and you could say that the Mathematician, who hasn’t for an instant stopped watching, by turns, the cars coming down the cross street, the ones that could turn sharply from San Martín, and the cable guardrail they are walking toward, until he feels released from his responsibility after they cross the guardrail, does not let go of Leto’s arm or continue his story before verifying that they can walk safely down the sidewalk. Then he goes on: as Botón has it, Washington, in the first part of his interjection, does not pose a single objection to Cohen or Barco’s propositions — furthermore, they seem pertinent to him and he appears to understand the point of view they presuppose. The only thing he finds objectionable, for the clarity of problem, is the selection of the horse as the object of analysis. In his modest opinion, one can handily discard the horse for several reasons. First off, the horse is too close to people (to whom he concedes, without major theoretical obstacles, the ability to stumble), which pollutes the rationale with anthropocentric contaminants, not to mention that the proximity between horses and people has caused every class of symbolic projection to be deposited on the poor animal, to such an extent that, under so many symbolic layers, it is difficult to know where to find the real horse. Likewise, we pretend to know so many things about the horse — we think that it’s strong, that it’s loyal, that it’s noble, that it’s tough, that it’s nervous, that it loves the pampa, and that it’s greatest ambition is to win the Carlos Pellegrini prize. We’re convinced that if it got into politics it would be nationalist, and that if it talked, it would sound like old Vizcacha. To top it off, says the Mathematician that Botón said that Washington said, because of its more or less pre-eminent position on the zoological ladder, the horse possesses an excessive biological and ontological density: it has too much flesh, too much blood, too many bones, too many nerves, and in spite of its elusive gaze, less indiscreet than the cow’s, we can conceive of its presence in this world as not exempt from necessity, in such a way that, through metaphysical negligence, to which not a few thinkers have succumbed, one could even allow an existential category that included both horses and people — in short, if he has understood correctly, what you could say in relation to Noca’s horse, which is certainly nothing but a pretext for the discussion, you would have to apply to another being, more differentiated from people than horses, a member of a species of living beings of course, but whose identity, inconsequential but irrefutable, is less disposed to misrepresentation. The mosquito, for example.
Waiting for the effect of his interjection, Washington turns a profile to the gathering and, slowly lifting his head, simulates interest in the crossbeam that supports the pitched roof over the illuminated pavilion. One or two, off guard, also raise their heads and examine the crossbeam, without seeing anything in particular, but the majority of the guests fail to demonstrate, in the seconds following Washington’s lecture, the slightest reaction, insofar as an almost ubiquitous silence, disrupted only by the sounds of utensils and plates, settles on the table. Almost ubiquitous: because just as Washington pronounces the last syllable of his interjection, Nidia Basso starts to laugh. Her laughter, suddenly welling up, you could say, under the pavilion, resonates in the surprised ears of the company, reverberates among the tops of the trees cooling in the darkness of the patio, and is finally lost, dispersing into many of the night’s different and contradictory directions, the starlit sky in particular — the starlit sky, or rather that thing above our heads, somewhat lost among the horizontal plane, that shines a neutral cover, without omnipotent or capricious or judgmental presences, the starlit sky, no? which, though no less mortal and likewise prisoner to the incessant solids and gasses, with its apparent firmness, its dimensions and its mystery, expansive and cold, annihilates us.
On the upper deck of the ferry, on the bench at the stern, the previous Saturday, Botón thought it opportune to introduce a quick digression, drawing a sharp caricature of Nidia Basso: according to Botón, whose tone of voice rises, suffused with rancorous qualifiers, Nidia Basso’s laughter does not on its own prove that the scene or the words that tie it together are comical, because in any situation, in fact, Nidia seems disposed to laugh at whatever is said, funny or not, insofar as, always according to Botón, her laughter has no connection to the outside world, and even less so with the part of the outside world composed of the words that Washington has just spoken. (The mosquito, for example.) What’s more, according to Botón, it would be difficult to tell if, in this specific case, it was Washington’s words or the silence after that caused it. Even though humorous rhetoric makes frequent appearances in Washington’s conversation, Botón argues savagely, the release of tame, easy, high-pitched laughter is a disproportionate response to Washington’s subtle irony, which should probably leave you thoughtful and could, at the most, make you smile, inwardly more than anything, unlike, for example, Tomatis’s vulgar, cheap cracks, or El Gato, whose supposed sense of humor consists in mocking the person who’s speaking. Listening to him, with his gaze constantly fixed on the spot on the river where the ferry’s wake starts to dissipate, the Mathematician suspects that, with the pretext of defining Nidia Basso’s peculiar laughter, Botón is exploiting the opportunity, for some unknown reason, to slander El Gato and Tomatis, but while he recounts Botón’s distinctions to Leto, in his own words, he omits, though he feels them again, his suspicions. If it were the words, the Mathematician says, then according to Botón it would mean a simple lack of subtlety in perceiving, behind the superficial irony, the gravity always apparent in Washington’s words (or vice versa), but if it was caused by the silence, one’s hypothesis would have to incline toward nervous laughter, less a sign of the comedy of the world than of neurasthenia in the issuing subject, Botón qualifies with postmodernist taste. Botón thinks that, in fact, if you were to attempt a general classification of distinct types of laughter relative to the circumstances that provoke it, you would realize that the overwhelming majority have little or nothing to do with humor. This is the case with Nidia Basso’s laughter. Botón says he never saw her laugh about something that was actually comical, or he didn’t notice, or doesn’t remember — in any case, laughter caused by something comical wouldn’t be, in Nidia Basso’s case, anything but a simple exception, a flash of real connection to the world, a fleeting moment of inattention to the incessant and anxious narcissism that suppresses her subjective laughter.