La Grande by Juan José Saer Page B

droplets of rain, is disintegrated and luminous. The white surfaces, even the white, lacquered wood bars of the gate, seem paradoxically more irregular, and the contours of things more uncertain, lines seemingly drawn by a seismograph, and the lights from the house, or from the headlights bouncing off the white gate, refract in each of the drops stuck to the windshield, a static flicker that the wiper blades, after he starts the engine, takeseveral passes to erase, a pointless exercise, in any case, since after each pass, new drops fall, luminous, from the black heights of the countryside and cover the glass again. He puts the car in reverse, then goes forward, then reverses again, and finally starts down the sandy path toward the paved road. The glimmer disappears, only to reappear each time the headlights of an approaching car reflect off the drops that, despite the ceaseless arcs traced by the wiper blades, their trajectory accompanied by the same resonant sweep, accumulate repeatedly against the glass. Holding the wheel with one hand, Nula takes the cigarettes and lighter from the pocket of his camper, moves the pack to the hand resting on the upper portion of the steering wheel, takes out a cigarette, and, after putting it between his teeth and lighting it and releasing a thin cloud of smoke, returns the cigarettes and lighter to the camper pocket. (He wasn’t wrong when he thought he’d be smoking a lot today.) He shifts slightly in his seat to find a comfortable position, grabs the wheel in both hands, and accelerates slightly by applying unconscious pressure to the gas pedal with his foot. With another short, sarcastic laugh, which makes the cigarette quiver, shaking his head back and forth, he mutters, She said no! She said no! He laughs again, and though he thinks he gets the complexity of the situation—he doesn’t realize yet that the situation might be much more complicated than he imagines—there are, undoubtedly, traces of bitterness in the sarcasm.
    The enormous hypermarket complex appears to his left, its eight theatres, its parking lot, its coffee shops, its cafeteria, and its restaurant all seemingly deserted despite the grandiose display of lights and colors hovering in the darkness of the countryside. The lights shine off the wet bodywork of the fifteen or twenty cars scattered around the parking lot, none of them near the main entrance. A year before, the land that is now occupied by the hypermarket was just a swamp in the middle of an empty floodplain—constantlyunder water, even when it was dry everywhere else—between La Guardia, where the road splits toward Paraná, and the branch of the river from which the city rises. Nula hesitates a few seconds, slowing down, deciding whether or not to turn into the complex; on Friday, Amigos del Vino starts a week-long promotion there, and he wants to finalize a couple of details with whomever’s in charge, but immediately he changes his mind and accelerates again. The network of lights and colors passes, then reappears for a few seconds, fragmentary, in the rear-view mirror before it disappears completely. Now the road widens into four lanes, and is lit up by tall, downward-curving poles projecting onto the reflective asphalt. The city lights appear overhead, to the right the straight line of lamps on the waterfront, and, to the left, less regularly, the lights on the port, on the avenues converging toward the river, on the buildings of various heights that stand out from the rest, on the regatta club. The car reaches the bridge. It’s so brightly lit that the city, despite its multiplicity of lights, appears dark on the other side. She said no , Nula says again, and, to underscore his disbelief, shakes his head in such a way that the cigarette, which he hasn’t taken from his lips since lighting it, and which he’s consumed a good potion of by now, vibrates in the air, disturbed by the words he says, by the movement