La Grande. Juan José SaerЧитать онлайн книгу.
own sensations that he did it, or rather out of love for the possession of that unique person who belonged only to him.
Nula crosses the bridge and turns onto the highway. The rain from the day before, which continued well into the night, has not yet dried, and the gray air blends into the horizon. The vegetation is still gray, but the low, dark clouds have been replaced by a high dome, a clear, even gray that releases sparks of water against the windshield, but these are so tiny and so scattered that they don’t even manage to coat it. He passes the enormous, brightly colored hypermarket, an eye-catching anachronism at the edge of a swampy expanse, and then La Guardia, before turning onto the road to Paraná. When he crosses the bridge over the Colastiné river, gray like everything else, he sees that the multiplicity of rippled, geometrical waves driven against the current, which he saw with Gutiérrez the afternoon before on the Ubajay, north of Rincón, are gone, and concludes that the southeast wind is gone, and when he looks hard at the low-lying vegetation on the island surrounding the asphalt road, he sees that it, too, is motionless. Before reaching the tunnel he sees, three or four kilometers ahead, above him, in the hills, beyond the main channel of the Paraná, the small, quiet city that, paradoxically, took the name of the excessive, turbulent river. Inside the tunnel, he starts going over the list of things he has to cover with the regional manager of Amigos del Vino, Américo, and when he emerges in Paraná, at five of eleven, he realizes that this trip could have been made the next day, as he’d planned the week before, in order to prepare the promotion at the hypermarket, but it had been impossible to wait that long to try to find Lucía.
If I was as fat as he is, I would’ve gotten out of the habit of working standing up by now, Nula thinks, as he does every other time he walks into the building and sees Américo writing in a ledger open on the tall desk where he works standing up, and which he himself designed for the carpenter, down to the millimeter. Hearing his footsteps, Américo looks up and watches him a moment over the tiny, oval-shaped reading glasses propped on the edge of his nose, and when he recognizes him he looks back down at the ledger as he offers a silent greeting that doesn’t appear to affect his concentration. Behind his desk, at the back of the room, which was first used as a workshop and later as a wine distillery, stacked carefully in piles according to brand and provenance, giving the impression more of a stage set than a commercial enterprise, sit the cases of wine. To the left of the entrance, that is, to the right of Américo (who works facing the entrance), behind a glass wall that heightens the scenic effect of the room, Américo’s wife and his secretary work, in what could strictly speaking be called the office, surrounded by metal filing cabinets, computers, and stacks of documents.
Américo is writing on a sheet of white paper sitting on top of the open ledger, tight lines riddled with strikethroughs, marginalia, and loose words inserted between the lines, above or below the ones he’s crossed out. Concentrating on his work, not looking away from the paper, he gestures with an apologetic smile for Nula to wait a second. Nula puts the briefcase on the floor, next to the desk, and waits. Although everyone calls him El Gordo, Américo isn’t really that fat, especially considering his height (1.80 meters) and his wife’s scrupulous control of his clothing and diet, allowing him a certain agility, nor does he seem old, because his closely trimmed gray beard is lighter than his thick, curly hair, which gives him a youthful look. Only his fingers are truly fat, but the grayish hair that covers them to the knuckles, tangled and solid across his hand, evokes virility more so than obesity. Nula leaves him to his work and walks into the office. Chela and the secretary are surprised to see him.
—We weren’t expecting you till tomorrow, Chela says.
—I’m a workaholic, and also I wanted to buy my wife a gift. I’ve heard about a shop here in Paraná, run by someone named Lucía Riera, Nula says, amazed at his capacity for inventing pretexts and offering them without stopping even for a second to think about it.
—I don’t know a Riera, but there’s a Lucía Calcagno, Mis pilchas, the most posh boutique in Paraná, Chela says. They have everything, Cacharel, Yves Saint Laurent, all the international brands.
—That must be her. Where does one find such a marvel? Nula asks, trying to hide his anxiety.
—Downtown, half a block from the square. I have a card around here somewhere, Chela says, looking through a drawer.
—Now I see why poor Américo has to work day and night, you have a special account there. Thanks, Nula says, and, taking the card and putting it in his jacket pocket, goes back out to the warehouse, just as Américo finishes silently rereading what he’s written, moving his head back and forth, correcting a final word, a line, a comma, and so on.
—Ready! he shouts, satisfied. Should I read it?
—What? Of course—Nula feigns offense—I drove all the way from the outer provinces just for this reading.
—Don’t waste your breath on a mule like me, Américo says, and Nula cracks up laughing, but Américo remains serious, silently re-reading one last time, before doing so aloud, for an expert audience, the brief text he’s been composing. Of the five decades of his life, Américo has dedicated more than half to the sale of wine, first as an importer until the crash under the dictatorship, when hyperinflation and the volatility of the market busted him. With Chela’s inheritance they transformed their current space, an abandoned warehouse, into a table wine distillery, bottling their own brand—Aconcagua—a name that according to his detractors referred to the liquid additive that Américo introduced into a Mendoza wine, but that business, also because of hyperinflation, failed as well. Some time later, one of the owners of Amigos del Vino, whom he’d worked with in the seventies, offered him the distribution rights for the northeast part of the country. And with the collusion, on the national level, of publicists and cardiologists, and the fortuitous global fashion for wine, through conventions, indirect publicity, and the inevitable rhetorical advancements that from time immemorial have accompanied the embarrassing consumption of alcoholic beverages, and wine in particular, things managed to turn around. In the regions that border the banks of the Paraná, as far north as Paraguay and south to Brazil, the Amigos del Vino, which, it goes without saying, found favorable ground, and without major obstacles, quickly prospered. And though the two previous failures had forced him to keep his current success in perspective, Américo, who attributes his good nature to having had the privilege of his mother’s breast till the age of seven, is happy enough with the present, but this doesn’t stop him from developing survival tactics in case everything falls apart again, as has happened periodically.
—Everyone in Entre Ríos is either a poet or a gangster, he says, as a preface, and ignoring the vaguely ironic but nonetheless friendly smile of his only listener, he starts: Wine, the measure of civilization, a precious nectar in every land, contributes to the good health of its faithful companion, the human being. Independent authorities have by now proven many times over that wine reduces stress, dissolves harmful fats in the blood which imperil the cardiovascular system, and contains vitamins, minerals, and enzymes that are beneficial to the body. But, above all, wine satisfies the palate, strengthens friendships, and multiplies and perfects moments of celebration. When he finishes, Américo pushes the tiny glasses to the end of his nose and, over the oval lenses, interrogates Nula with a look.
—Not bad, not bad, Nula says. But you have to add something about the French paradox, something about the vines, and something about the sawyils, he says. purposefully exaggerating the rural pronunciation of the word. And, if at all possible, he adds, finish with a set of more or less potable quatrains from Omar Kayyám.
—Good idea! Américo shouts, dipping his head slightly into his shirt collar in such a way that his beard covers the knot on his tie, and pointing at Nula with a fat, hairy finger on his left hand. But, he adds, it has to be quick. This draft has to go out next week to Resistencia, Corrientes, and Posadas. We’ll print up colored cards with different stanzas of the lofty poet. Turquito, one of these days I’m making you head of sales and locking you up in the office so you’ll quit your dicking around.
—You mean like this? Nula says, and glancing quickly toward the office to make sure that Chela and the secretary aren’t watching, he forms a circle with his index finger and thumb on his left hand and passes the rigid index finger