— On several points, Botón is more credible than Tomatis, he says, resuming the conversation as though nothing had happened. Maybe, Leto thinks malevolently, inclined to listen but also to controlling, severely, at every step, to put it one way, and in a literal sense as well in the present case, his credibility. But like every other time his rigorist projects give away almost simultaneously to their formation, plowed under by what you might call an organic relativism that comes from his insecurity maybe, or from a negatively charged rigorism that he directs against himself — to tell the truth, he wouldn’t mind being like the Mathematician, to be able to separate the authentic or at least the probable from the problematic, and at the same time be so enmeshed in historicity to know that he should avoid, at whatever cost, a stain on his pants. On the other hand, their coincidental, negative judgment of Tomatis equalizes them not only through their similar vision of things, but also through their intimacy with Tomatis himself, an intimacy that, paradoxically, the negative judgment intensifies rather than diminishes. And finally, Washington’s notorious mosquitos have intrigued him: in the coming and going of thoughts, memories, associations, of false images that from this moment, and for the rest of his life, he will retain as though they were real memories, the mosquitos swirl, gray and clear, pass over and over across the visible part of his mind where, like in a variety show, a parade of images are called up, as they say, by the Mathematician’s detailed commentary. The Mathematician, passing egocentrically from a pathological preservation of his pants to an impartial and effortless refutation of the Tomatian maledictions, continues thus: Does Rita Fonesca, when she’s got some drinks in her, try to show everyone her tits? He, the Mathematician, doesn’t deny this. It’s likely. But does she not in fact have a right to? And making a wide and theatrical gesture after stopping abruptly, like the magician who suddenly manifests his beautiful assistant in a sequin leotard at a spot on stage that had been completely empty up until that moment, he stretches his arm toward a shop window, pointing it out with an open hand and a broad, satisfied smile.
Tamely, stopping likewise, Leto looks toward the window indicated by the Mathematician’s open hand. Behind it, the building, still closed, is in semidarkness despite the white walls that emit, in that darkness, a kind of glow. At the back, the only furniture, a desk and a couple of armchairs, are somewhat obscured by the semidarkness that dissipates near the windows flanking the door to the street, screened behind a sheet metal curtain. Hung from the white walls are several unframed paintings of a distinct form, generally very large and on which they can see, from the street, various abstract lines. But, well-exposed to the window indicated by the Mathematician, also without a frame and leaning against a white, wooden easel, one of the paintings is displayed in order to be seen from outside the building, through the window. Next to the painting is a white card that reads: GALERÍA DE ARTE — RITA FONESCA — DRIPPINGS — 1959/1960.
— She has a right to, no? insists the Mathematician proudly and enthusiastically, pointing to the canvas displayed in the window, which Leto has begun to look at. And since, bothered by his insistence, Leto doesn’t respond, the Mathematician falls silent, as they say, without being able to stop himself from observing, as he did during Tomatis’s reading, Leto’s aesthetic reaction. But this time Leto forgets his presence and penetrates, to put it one way, the surface covered to the edges with paint, withdrawing so much and so suddenly, from the outside world, that he doesn’t even hear the car horns starting, for a few seconds, to honk again and then stopping because the lines of cars that were stuck at the intersection have started, at a walking pace, to move again. Leto has never seen a painting like this: it’s a rectangle about a meter tall and some eighty centimeters wide, without representation of any kind, no figure or silhouette, not even a vague or distorted shape, but rather an accumulation of drops, smears, splashes, and splatters of fluid paint in various colors that superimpose, contrast, are neutralized, blend, and combine, and, together, harmonize miraculously despite the irregular, frenzied, and dizzying randomness with which the paint was dripped onto the canvas. She can show the whole world her tits if she paints this well, he thinks, mesmerized, tempering with this crude parody — coincidentally allowing him to express his admiration — the unmistakably violent emotion produced by the painting. No color dominates, notwithstanding the flashes — not periodic because their combined distribution doesn’t conform to any regularity — with which they stand out every so often, and always in close relation, as they say, to the others, at different points on the surface. The splatters, thin for the most part, sometimes thicken into whirlpools, into smears superimposed several times, into variously sized drops, which, upon hitting the canvas, falling from different heights, thrown with varied force, or consisting of mixed quantities of more or less diluted paints, therefore color in a distinct way each time, not only because of their size, but more so because of their perfectly individuated scattering across the canvas. Meanwhile, the smears and tortuous splatters extend to the edges, the four corners nailed to the frame, in a way that makes the area behind the frame into a continuation of the visible surface; the viewer can easily intuit that the visible area is just a fragment, and the eye, reaching the edges where the surface folds, senses the indefinite extension of the intricate apparition continuing, with its unexpected combination of colors, of densities, of speeds, of jumps and accumulations, of abrupt turns and temperatures, beyond the tormented canvas. They’re not forms but formations — temporarily fixed traces of a ceaseless flux, no? — a sensible cluster, you might say, at a precise, tense point in time, tenuously juxtaposing, without annihilating, intent and accident, and adding, to the present, unbinding thrill and radiance. Leto shakes his head several times while tucking his upper inside his lower lip to express his admiring perplexity. The Mathematician, who has been looking at the painting and at him simultaneously, constantly examining his reactions, follows willingly and gratefully when he turns and continues walking.
A sort of manifold pride fills the Mathematician, first for having introduced Leto to a talented artist, since it’s always pleasant and calming to have been first in anything, second because he interprets Leto’s admiration to be sincere, which in a certain sense confirms his own artistic taste, no? and finally with the refutation, without wasted words but instead a simple presentation of proof, of another of Tomatis’s slanders, or in any case of his slanted view, as they say, of the facts. Because in fact, the Mathematician says with an easy smile that’s aimed at demonstrating his complete lack of interest in moralizing about the issue, it’s a patent fallacy to claim that when Rita’s drunk she tries to show everyone her tits because she’s actually always drunk and most of the time her torso is completely covered. No, if she does that every so often, according to the Mathematician, it’s not from alcoholism or exhibitionism, but out of shyness: what to do, what to say, how to act in society? Should you fake interest in mundane conversations and behave pretentiously, attempt refutations of impervious yet completely false arguments, rationalize a preference for quince over yam candies or Miró over Dalí? Ugh, no! Better to sit quietly in a corner drinking gin after gin after gin and smoking cigarettes without saying a word until suddenly, at a given point in the evening, in order to finally take action after an intolerable paralysis, not knowing the right way to behave or the right thing to say, just to discharge her anguish, pow, tits unleashed. This of course without any forethought, in a more or less compulsive way, when, not only everyone else, but she herself least expects it. He, the Mathematician, has several times had the fortune of seeing her at work in her studio: she paints without an easel, puts a rectangle of canvas straight on the floor and all around the canvas arranges cans of paint in which she dips sticks of different widths — pieces of broom handles, rods, tree or shrub branches she peels with a knife, brush handles — and then drips over the canvas; other times she pours paint into a colander and lets it drip over the canvas, or she pierces holes directly into the paint cans and runs them over the canvas. Nearby, on a little table, she has a bottle of gin, glasses, a dented aluminum bowl filled with ice, and a bunch of packs of Colmenas and Gaviláns. Sometimes, if the canvas is too wide, she moves around the corners with her sticks and paint cans and colanders, but if the width permits she stands over it, her legs spread wide apart so as not to step on the canvas, bent over toward the floor all day — one of her favorite jokes, she has always the same two or three, which only she laughs at, is that to be a painter you have to have a trucker’s kidneys and that actually the gin isn’t for inspiration but to ease the pain in her hips. Once in a while, says the Mathematician, she stands up, takes a good drink, and then goes back to work with her cigarette hanging miraculously between half-open lips, holding her head rigid to keep the ash from falling onto the canvas; every so often she stands up to tap out the ash and consider her progress. It seems strange to him, the Mathematician, no? that she’s such good friends with Héctor, the other painter, because it’s hard to imagine two more dissimilar modes of practicing or understanding the work — this on top of having such different personalities. Héctor takes weeks, months, to finish a painting; she, on occasion, paints three or four a day. When he has an idea, Héctor puts it into practice exactingly, patiently, making calculations, theories, and all his paintings, even all his sketches, have a theoretical foundation, not counting the fact that his paintings are sometimes monochrome, or they have one or two colors, or different tones of the same color, and are almost always geometrical. Héctor finds what he’s looking for before starting to paint; she paints constantly and stops when she finds something. He, the Mathematician, once heard her say that being a good painter consists of knowing when the painting’s done, when to stop; and in fact, the paintings that don’t come out, because she’s actually gone too far — which happens most of the time — she crumples and throws in the garbage. Several times a day she has to throw out the results of hours of work — several times a day — because her hand, which had been passing ceaselessly over the canvas, dripping highly diluted paint, has not performed the exact movement needed to impress the final colors in a way that makes their combination — incidental and chaotic up till that moment — begin to radiate an exalting inevitability and grace, says the Mathematician, more or less. But, bent over the canvas, swaying a little because of the gin, absently tapping out her cigarette, she must be the first to notice, in the apparent disorder, the magical proof. Not just in that way is she different from Héctor — and what’s curious is that they feel a sincere and reciprocal admiration, and two or three times a week they’ll spend all night getting drunk together at a hotel bar. Héctor talks constantly, and she doesn’t speak a word except when she’s had a whole bottle of gin, then she talks nonstop, unless its to unbutton her blouse, and she shouts and laughs at whatever until — no one knows why and least of all her — she ends up insulting whomever she’s talking to. They’re both around thirty, and they studied a while together at the Fine Arts school, but while Héctor spent time in Europe visiting museums and carrying on theoretical discussions with the cream of the European avant-garde, she has never once left the city. Héctor buys his sweaters in Buenos Aires, and sometimes even orders them from Rome or Paris; she’s always walking around in the same skirt and the same blazer, paint-stained just like her hands and sometimes even her hair, with big, worn-out men’s shoes on her feet and no makeup on her face, a Gavilán or a Colmena always hanging from her lips, a mismatched manicure most often trimmed with black grime, constantly looking for someone — a man or woman, it doesn’t matter — to bring home with her for the night because she can’t stand to be alone; it’s rare for her to go to sleep before dawn, she’s endlessly coming and going to fill her glass with gin and get ice from the dented bowl. And in fact Botón, who the wicked tongues don’t know what else to whisper about, because he has an official girlfriend in Diamante, that wasted bullet known as Botón, says the Mathematician (more or less), thick as he is, happens to be — along with Héctor, of course — one of the few people who knows how to handle her. It’s the hidden side of Botón, which he himself is careful to hide, preferring instead, who knows for what obscure reason, to present himself to the world as an alcoholic womanizer. What’s clear is that Botón would abandon anything, at any time of day or night, if she called him. He, the Mathematician, thinks that if some sort of sexual relationship existed between them, it must have been only early on, and if they apparently get drunk together most of the time, it’s only with her that Botón is careful because he knows that in the morning he’ll have to take care of her, and if at the party he got as drunk as Tomatis claims it’s because he couldn’t prevent her coming with Héctor and Elisa in order to stay until the morning — the morning, no? — when after a whole day of disappointment waiting for the night’s deliverance you finally understand, as the vain blackness fades at the first dismal light, that the day, that dreadful and endless film, is starting again.