The Sixty-Five Years of Washington. Juan José Saer
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pavilion among the trees at the back. Nidia Basso and Tomatis were making a bitter salad in the kitchen. Cohen, the psychologist, who was going to be the cook, was lighting a fire in the grill. Barco was filling glasses with beer, and Basso cut slices of strong cheese and mortadella on a board and passed it around. Beatriz was rolling a cigarette. Washington, who had just relieved himself of his old Aerolinas Argentinas bag, which was full of books and papers, held a glass of beer in his hand, without deciding to take the first drink. And Botón? Botón, for hours, seemed to have removed himself from his story, as if the role of observer precluded his intervention in the action. Introducing a subtle variation, the Mathematician comments that, in fact, Botón’s version of events demands, with Botón’s personality in mind, a continuous revision, aimed at translating the scene from the province of mythology to that of history, but Leto, right then, from beneath the persistent image of a courtyard on the coast, on a winter evening, full of familiar and unfamiliar faces that combine vaguely, Leto, I was saying, no?, almost without realizing it, and even though it’s always the same, is thinking about another time, about Isabel, the incurable illness, about Lopecito saying next to the closed casket, his eyes full of tears: Your old man was a television pioneer. He had the inventor’s gift. I owe him everything.
—The idea to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday was the twins’, says the Mathematician. And you have to tip your hat to them for bringing together such a diverse crowd. But as the saying goes: not everyone there was someone nor was everyone who’s someone there.
Leto looks at him: Is this a courtesy? But his look bounces off the perfect profile of the Mathematician who, with his gaze fixed on a point of air between the sidewalk and the treetops, somewhat absently, remembers: one night the previous summer when they were talking to Washington, Tomatis, and Silvia Cohen on the Cohen’s terrace, and Tomatis, who had been filling his glass of gin on the rocks nonstop, had begun to curse the fate of humanity, purely in jest, raising a threatening fist to the starlit sky, and he, the Mathematician, had started pulling his leg, but Washington, without distracting himself very much from his conversation with Silvia Cohen, had told Tomatis, pretending to answer an honest theoretical question, to let it go, that from a logical point of view the person who purely and simply whimpers under the stars, frightened by the absurdity of the situation, is closer to the truth than someone who, trying to be a hero or a believer in historicity, attempts, in spite of everything, to raise a family or win a book award from the SADE. A quick, distracted and discreet smile flashes in the Mathematician’s eyes. But, for some obscure reason, which even he is not conscious of, instead of telling that anecdote about Washington, he tells another, which he hasn’t thought about in a long time and which, as he started telling it aloud, was free of its representations.
—I heard that once a fantasy story writer, who was visiting him from Buenos Aires, asked Washington if he ever thought of writing a novel. And Washington puts on a scared face, as if the writer were threatening him. After a moment he answers: I, like Heraclitus of Ephesus and general Mitre in Paraguay, shall leave but fragments.
They laugh, continue on. The Mathematician thinks: Noca said that, if he came late, it was because one of his horses had stumbled. And Leto: He stole the love of his life, turned him into a bachelor, left him in charge of his family, and he says that he owes him everything.
—Supposedly, says the Mathematician, Noca told Basso that he’d be late because one of his horses had stumbled and broken a leg. They stood, Botón had said, five or six around Cohen, chewing cubes of mortadella and drinking beer as an appetizer, and observing Cohen, who was arranging coals and firewood, not without making every kind of grimace and weeping from the heat and smoke from which the spectators remained at a comfortable distance. And when, according to Botón, Basso had related Noca’s excuse, Cohen had abruptly interrupted his work and, without stopping from weeping and making painful grimaces, had planted himself, insistently, in front of Basso: Since when do horses stumble? he’d said.
—What? They don’t stumble? Leto says.
—They stumble, they do, says the Mathematician placatingly. And after a doubtful pause: Actually, it depends.
—Depends on what? Leto says.
—Depends on what you mean by stumble.
According to the Mathematician, and always according to Botón, no?, Cohen’s argument had been the following: if stumbling is an er ror, and horses, like every other animal, act purely on instinct, isn’t it contradictory to attribute an error to instinct? An instinct would be something that, by definition, does not make mistakes. Instinct, Cohen said before returning triumphant to the flames, is pure necessity. When he turned his back on the spectators to work the fire with exaggerated attention, you could sense, to his satisfaction, a general silence. But a moment later Basso interjected again: He was only relating what Noca had told him, to let everyone know that, if he was late, it was because one of his horses had stumbled and . . . Yeah, yeah, we get it, interrupted, with lighthearted impatience, Barco, who had left his post at the keg and reached the pavilion just in time to hear Basso’s story and Cohen’s objection. What, in his opinion, you had to ask yourself instead, were two things: the first, if it’s true that instinct doesn’t make mistakes; the second, if stumbling is a mistake. A pensive silence fell over the gathering. Basso interjected again: The problem with Noca was you could never tell when he was mythologizing and when he was telling the truth. And because he didn’t provide many details, they were forced to guess whether the horse had stumbled alone or when someone was riding it: Leto evokes, easily, the image of a man on a horse. The Mathematician thinks: The problem only arises for a horse with a rider. In that case, the error is the rider’s and not the horse’s. Just then, though, and always according to Botón, there was a commotion: Tomatis was carrying the fish, which he had just rewashed at the kitchen sink, in an enormous plastic tub (yellow, Leto thinks). You have to wash them again because there’s always some sand left behind, the Mathematician says that Botón told him that Tomatis said. And he adds: For Tomatis to have washed the greens and rewashed the fish shows how much he admires Washington. He and El Gato are his favorites. Washington, though he isn’t one or the other, has a soft spot for cynics and the arrogant.
But Tomatis isn’t cynical and El Gato isn’t arrogant, Leto thinks. Or is it the opposite? At that point, according to the Mathematician, it’s easy to imagine what followed: The fat catfish who offer the fruit of their body year round and the metallic perch who, prudently, only appear in winter, were submitted to the proper treatment for highlighting, perfecting even, their qualities; after filling them with a generous portion of onion and some parsley and bay leaf, they dipped the newspapers in oil and, with a dusting of salt and pepper, wrapped the fish up and arranged them neatly in rows on the grill, where the carefully distributed coals beneath would prevent any of the fragile meat from being lost. And to think he calls Botón a folklorist, Leto thinks with a touch of bad faith now that he can detect, in the Mathematician’s description, a touch of irony. Because, additionally, the Mathematician insists that whosoever looks to swim unaided in the colorless river of postulates, syllogistic modes, categories, and definitions should accompany his studies with a strict dietary regimen: fed on yogurts and blanched vegetables, the abstract order of everything, in its utmost simplicity, will be revealed, ecstatic and radiant, to the relentless, recently bathed ascetic.
—I’ll be right back, the Mathematician says unexpectedly, and taking from his pants pocket several pages folded in quarters, he enters the La Mañana building. Leto sees the tall, tanned body, dressed in all white, cross, with elegant strides, the threshold of the morning paper. After tomorrow, the press release, soaked in oil, will be used to wrap up perch and catfish, he thinks bitterly. And then: He left suddenly to force me to stay. Accepting, passively, the inexplicable need for his company that the Mathematician seems to feel, Leto leans against the trunk of the last tree on the sidewalk. Beyond the bright cross street, at the opposite corner, the street widens abruptly, and trees no longer line the sidewalks. As they have approached the city center, more people have appeared on the streets, and because the commercial district proper starts to concentrate after the next block, the passing cars, slow and humming, are mixed with bicycles, tricycles, and light delivery trucks painted with the names and addresses of businesses. Despite the conversation