Leto will find him like this when, suspecting he might not have another chance, he decides to visit him. Tomatis will greet him with a weak smile, more visible in his squinting eyes than in his mouth, which will spread somewhat blankly, without his lips parting. For the first few minutes he won’t even get up from his chair — his sister will be the one who lets him in — and his conversation will be disjointed because he will be looking anxiously at the television screen so as not to lose the thread of the show he is watching. But later, just when Leto begins to regret coming, with a superhuman effort, as they say, he will introduce him to his sister as an old book editor friend who has come from Buenos Aires, and will invite him up to the terrace to talk in peace. Tomatis will give Leto the plastic apple after filling it with ice, and carrying the demijohn and dragging his flip-flops while trying to hold up his underwear with the same hand that’s pinching the glasses, will ascend the red staircase to the terrace. It will be the afternoon. Tomatis will offer him a glass of wine, which he will decline, but after some hesitation, in which he’s not sure whether Tomatis isn’t scared that his visit will implicate him, he will ask for a caramel, or a Coca-Cola, and Tomatis will stand up, barefoot, clutching the underwear that even his swollen paunch can’t sustain, and, leaning over into the interior patio, ask his sister for a caramel. The sister will bring him a cellophane bag of fruit caramels, orange, yellow, green, red, each individually wrapped in little cellophane papers with twisted ends, which Leto will unwrap once in a while so as to pop the candy in his mouth and then toss in an empty tray next to his folding chair. Once in a while, Tomatis will look with vague curiosity at the canvas bag where he knows Leto has a gun. Night will come. Leto will feel confused, slightly disoriented: He has come to Tomatis to enjoy, maybe for the last time, his lethal jokes, his conversation, his somewhat nasal voice that’s accustomed to discharging torrents of slightly stuttered words that are punctuated here and there with bursts of elegance, but finds instead an overweight, middle-aged man, his eyes teary, bright but bleary and alcoholic at the same time, his days-old beard more gray than black, his face swollen, feet dirty, and underwear dubious, a middle-aged man who mutters this or that irresolute and slightly weird question every five minutes, losing interest in the response almost immediately but repeating the same question a half hour later, as though he had never asked it, losing interest in the response again and drifting away into incomprehensible, labored ruminations. That fear is not what holds Tomatis back is proven by the fact that his questions refer, with the same detachment and the same indifference, to the most compromising and the most banal subjects, which, in normal times, they could have discussed in a lively, exhaustive way, but which on that winter evening Tomatis will mutter without conviction, uncertain and impassive, and to which he — Leto, no? — will most often respond with monosyllables, honest but incomplete. After a while his mistrust will transform into relief, and when he realizes that Tomatis’s rare moments of good mood consist of a sanctimonious, mechanical rehearsal of television commercial slogans, into compassion as well. A couple of times, because the television was left on, Tomatis will get up, interested in the change in programming, in some sensationalist news story, in the plot of a police drama, yelling questions down to his sister through the interior patio, and then sitting down again in his folding chair, thoughtful a few seconds while serving himself another glass of wine on ice. Until, at a certain point, the pivotal question will reach Leto’s ears, so sudden and unexpected that, in a violent rush of emotion, though he has spent years walking through gunfire unfazed and practically indifferent, he will feel faster and more violent beatings of his heart. Is it true about the pill? Tomatis will ask, leaning in, with the same complicit, delicate smile that he might have used to ask him about a pornographic photograph. Leto won’t say yes or no. Looking Tomatis directly in the eyes, he will search for the complicit smile he just had, but to his surprise Tomatis’s eyes, vacant of the least glint of humor, will be fixed on him, for the first time since he arrived, with a vivid, almost imperative stare. His eyes, which will have been moist and weepy during the whole meeting, will now glow so strong that Leto will think, mistakenly, that they are reflecting the lights in the terrace. In the end, Leto will slowly unbutton the safety pouch hidden under his belt and will remove the pill and, suddenly opening his hand, will make it appear in his palm, moving it toward Tomatis, and during that more or less quick movement, the plastic capsule containing it will reflect, in passing, one of the lights. Tomatis will lean forward to observe, with slow shakes of his head, of corroboration, affirmative at first, then negative, and finally affirmative again. Of course, of course, he will say, as though thinking of something else. And then he — Leto, no? — will put it away again.
A few months later he will take it out for the last time, in Rosario, in fact, and, in fact, in Arroyito. He will be alone in a house they’ve told him is secure, where, they’ve told him, not the slightest chance of detection exists. He will be laying on the bed, in the darkness, smoking cigarette after cigarette — lighting them, as he is in the habit of doing, with the one he’d just finished — not thinking of anything, examining the shape of the sparse furniture, the silhouette of the window, and the somewhat clearer darkness filtering in through the blinds of the shades. It will be around 11:00. An electric heater, placed at the foot of the entrance to the room, in the hallway, will give off a reddish glow, which the flame of the cigarette, brightening with every puff, will seem — to put it one way — to echo or metastasize. He will be fully dressed, since he has adopted, for years now, the habit of sleeping that way in difficult times, less to feel secure than to gain time, according to what you might call the principle of objective efficacy, in which his personal interests are not considered whatsoever. On the floor, within arm’s reach, are his weapons. He will be just lighting a new cigarette with the end of the one he has just finished when, for a fraction of a second, he registers a large, very fast shadow momentarily imprinted on the parallel rays of clear darkness filtering gray through the blinds and, sitting up slightly in bed trying to listen for something, will put out the stub in the center of the ashtray and balance the one he has just lit on the notch so that, if it’s a false alarm, the cigarette won’t be wasted unnecessarily. Without making a sound, he will pick up his gun, turn off the electric heater to thicken the darkness, and approach the window. At first he won’t see anything but the empty street, the stoplights, the trees, the sidewalks, the parked cars — everything tempered-looking, sharpened, full of dark reflections caused by the dry, hard-to-breathe air of the winter night. For one minute at least, he will remain motionless, looking through the blinds, and that minute will be so long and monotonous that, when it has passed, he won’t even remember why he came silently to the window, since the street and the hard lines of the clearly outlined things in the frozen air will appear abandoned and even empty. When he is about to turn back and pick up the cigarette from the notch on the ashtray he will see shadows move slightly on the opposite sidewalk, less stable than the ones of the houses and of the naked trees crisscrossing those of streetlights on the sidewalk—like a spider web—he will think, a final literary reflex whose conventional, trite style will cast an ironic tint to his thought. And, the way someone developing a photograph perceives its details little by little, he will recognize little by little the outlines, the unmistakable silhouettes of armed men running hunched over to hide or protect themselves in doorways, behind cars or trees. Like the traveler who, before boarding a train, puts his hand in his pocket to check that he hasn’t lost his ticket, Leto will reach for the thin pocket under his belt, will rub the capsule through the cloth, and, continuing to look through the blinds, will start to unbutton the pocket. Seeing two armed men cross toward the house, bounding silently across the asphalt, he will tell them, without uttering a word, with his thoughts, as he is used to doing: You two, like the ones behind the cars and the trees, like the ones waiting on the corners, like the ones probably already at the front door, on the roof or at the back patio at least, you’re not real, you’re like ghosts or clouds or smoke, because I have my pill, I’ve just touched it with the tips of my fingers, the pill that with a single click will annihilate the big bang, the blind, senseless proliferation of its heavy metals and its ridiculous pseudoeternity. And, groping toward the night stand and lifting the cigarette from the notch in the ashtray to take two or three more puffs before putting it out, he will bring the pill to his mouth in a motion so fast that, before biting it, holding it a moment between his teeth without pressing down, he will need to wait to exhale the last puff of smoke.