— On top of that, Tomatis says, do not forget that by then the beer and the white wine were beginning to take effect.
Not in Washington, of course, he clarifies, but Beatriz and Silvia are not ones to shy from the bottle. And Cuello, forget it — unfortunately his congenital populism blooms once he’s put back a few glasses, and it ends up being impossible to dissuade him from his fixed idea that the best way to fill the silence at a party is with folklore. Pirulo, on the other hand, is an evil drunk and likes to get in fights — he, Tomatis, can understand the resentment of someone who has nothing but American sociology to help him deal with reality. Early in the morning, he doesn’t remember why anymore, Pirulo had started exchanging blows with Dib, and he and Pichón had to go and separate them — Dib and Pirulo, who had been such good friends in school and claimed to have mobilized between them the entire Rosarian student body in ’59. You can see, Tomatis suggests, why living with Pirulo makes Rosario look for comfort at the end of a needle. What happened was they found them punching each other at the back of the patio — Dib had blood running from nose and bloody stains on his sweater. As soon as he, Tomatis, no? and Pichón looked away, they had started again: Dib had Pirulo by the hair and was dragging him across the patio, between the mandarins. Finally Barco, who’s like two meters tall, had to separate them. Between the three of them they pushed Dib and Pirulo to the bathroom and made them wash their faces, all of this in low voices, whispering so that the people under the pavilion wouldn’t notice. Which failed, of course, and two minutes later he, Tomatis, no? Pichón, Pirulo, Dib, Barco, Basso, Nidia Basso, Rosario, and Botón were all in the bathroom, yelling at each other in what they imagined were low voices. Basso wanted to kick them out, but Nidia intervened on their behalf; Rosario was shaking her head and not saying anything, staring at Pirulo with a look that more or less said,
You had to make a scene again; and Botón, who only an hour before had tried to rape La Chichito, was acting like Dib and Pirulo’s behavior was a personal insult to Washington. Don’t let Washington find out, please, he was saying melodramatically, when a minute earlier La Chichito, all disheveled, had come crying under the pavilion, holding up her skirt because Botón had broken its zipper. He had gotten the idea, Tomatis recalls, that Dib and Pirulo had to give each other a conciliatory hug, an idea thoroughly in Botón’s style, and if you needed further proof that Botón and reality were entities of a contradictory nature, he insisted on volunteering this genteel exhortation while everyone else, divided into two groups, was making a superhuman effort to hold back Dib and Pirulo, who had been glaring at each other during the reconciliation and at the slightest distraction started hitting each other again. Finally the whole thing ended when. .