Scars. Juan José Saer
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floor. The guy went to the concierge desk and I followed him.
—Two twelve, he said.
The concierge gave him the key. The guy turned around without even looking at me and got in the elevator. I stood there watching him through the elevator gate as the metal box rose and then disappeared. Then the concierge asked me what he could do for me.
—I’m wondering if a Mister Philip Marlowe is staying in this hotel; I expected him this morning, I said.
—Mister what? said the concierge.
—Philip Marlowe, I said.
The concierge started looking over the registry.
—Arriving from where? he said.
—Los Angeles, California, I said.
The concierge looked carefully over the guest registry.
—He hasn’t arrived, sir.
—Thanks, I said, and left.
The clock at the Casa Escassany rang nine times. I passed through the deli, bought two bottles of red wine, and went to Tomatis’s place. It had stopped raining now, but the humidity was madman. I caught a taxi on the corner of the central market and gave Tomatis’s address. When Tomatis invites you to his house, he means you should go to a tiny apartment he rents for work, in a remote neighborhood, jammed between two avenues. When he says to come to my mother’s house, he means the house where he lives with his mother and sister, downtown. I actually prefer the room Tomatis has on the terrace of his mother’s house, because there’s a pullout sofa, a desk, a small library, and a reproduction of Wheatfield with Crows over the sofa, on the yellow wall. The apartment on the outskirts is more comfortable, but you rarely find him there. It’s likely he won’t answer phone calls because he’s either working or in bed with someone. Sometimes he invites me over and he’s not home when I get there. The city rolled by past the taxi’s windows, drenched. The sidewalk in front of Tomatis’s house was darker than the bottom of the ocean, but a trace of light escaped through the foot of his doorway. I rang the doorbell twice and waited a long time before anyone opened the door. Horacio Barco was the one who answered. He took up the whole entrance with his bulk, which was stuffed into a wine-colored turtleneck sweater and these wool pants I’ll ask to borrow the day I take up begging.
—Hello, he said.
He let me in, and I crossed the threshold into the house. He followed me into the first illuminated room. There were two armchairs and several chairs scattered around, a bookcase, and a desk. A sofa bed was pulled out, and I supposed Barco had been there because only a person of his dimensions could have made a hole like that in a bed. The late edition was on the floor, strewn around. I left the wine on the table and asked Barco if he had some idea were Tomatis could be.
—I’m absolutely certain he’s somewhere, Barco said.
—He invited me to dinner, I said.
Barco extended his arm.
—I think there’s stuff in the kitchen, he said.
—I can wait a while still, I said.
Barco made a gesture that meant absolutely nothing and threw himself on the bed. He stretched out face up and was snoring two minutes later. I went over to Tomatis’s desk and saw an open notebook, full of scribbles in the margin and a handwritten text that went as follows:
To catch a rabbit, you need a point the rabbit can’t cross;
to make him tired, you need a field for him to run;
to make him die, you need a place, in the open country or in a tangle of branches, where death can find him.
Only the light he carried inside himself was unreal.
Then some blank pages I slid back with my forefinger, among them a loose sheet, handwritten, that said:
The faint farmhouse, erased, moving away,
the sparse habitations warmly illuminated,
where pale-faced men walk from the table to the window,
the beds filled with an animal smell,
the melancholy bars with sticky floors where turbulent music plays,
the government office and the police precinct, the courthouse,
the parks abandoned in the rain,
women face-down on mossy, arabesque rugs,
the pavement and the smoke of sad chimneys, mixing with the rain,
the white city hall, it’s dark windows,
the slow buses traveling the empty streets,
the murmur of a million minds constantly running,
a slow disintegration
The sound of the street door startled me, and I hid the sheet of paper inside the notebook. I left the notebook open on the table, the way I had found it. Tomatis appeared at the entrance to the room, followed by male and female voices. I heard the sound of high heels in the corridor. Tomatis stopped, surprised to see me. I realized that he had forgotten the invitation but remembered it right away. Then he glanced quickly from the bed to the table and, seeing the notebook open, gave me a suspicious look and went and closed it. Immediately behind him were three young women and a guy with glasses who was dressed in a blue jacket and wool pants. The women’s faces I recognized. The guy I had never seen in my fucking life. He was holding a raincoat. The women were folding up their umbrellas and one of them, wearing this madman green dress, untied a headscarf and started shaking out her hair, throwing it backward. Tomatis went and shook Barco, who sat up in the bed and looked around. Then he rubbed his hands over his face a few times and got up. One of the women, wearing a white raincoat cinched at the waist, carried a straw bag in her hand. Tomatis took it and put it on the table. He opened it and started taking things out: two bottles of whiskey and a pile of canned food. From the bottom he pulled a loaf of homemade bread. Two of the women disappeared farther into the house, and Tomatis followed them, so in the room the only people left were Horacio Barco, the girl in the green dress, and the guy with the raincoat folded over his arm. The guy was standing near the door; Barco next to the bed, his hands in his pockets; I was resting a hand on the table, near the cans and the bottles of whiskey; and the girl in the green dress stood in the middle of the room, with her green umbrella in one hand and her scarf and handbag in the other. I was about to say something, because no one was talking and the situation was getting awkward, but just then Tomatis and the other two women reappeared and started taking the cans and bottles to the kitchen. Barco crossed the room behind them and disappeared, so the only people left were the guy in the blue jacket with his raincoat folded over his arm, the girl in the green dress, and me.
—Is it raining again? I ask.
—A little, says the girl in the green dress.
The guy with glasses stares but doesn’t say a thing. After a second, I gesture to the bed and the chairs and say:
—Should we sit?
The girl in the green dress shrugs and sits in a chair, without letting go of the umbrella or the handbag or the scarf. The guy with glasses stands there as if he was made out of stone. I sit down on the edge of the bed. I take out my cigarette pack and offer, but no one accepts. So I light a cigarette for myself and put the pack away. I bite the filter, my lips apart and head back slightly so the smoke doesn’t get in my eyes. If they don’t have a filter to chew on, cigarettes don’t interest me. What I really like is chewing the filter, not smoking. The girl in the green dress looks at me with her eyes wide open. I’m sitting on the edge of the table, my legs stretched out, my hands in the pockets of my raincoat, chewing the cigarette filter. My eyes are half shut and my head is back. The other guy is still standing there, not moving, and I’m tempted to go over and shake him to see if he’s dead or not. Just then Tomatis comes in, holding a glass.
—Make