snapping, scuffling, against sand, water, weeds, wet mud, a complex but sustained rhythm interspersed with the ephemeral dissonance of scrambling or involuntary interjections. When they are close to the ranch, Chacho veers off to the left, and the flashlight beam tracks from his sandals some ten or fifteen meters ahead, illuminating what appears to be a road. Above it, at a distance thatâs difficult to measure, possibly two or even three blocks ahead, appears a row of streetlights, shining tenuously.
âThis here runs into the road. When you get there, turn right, to the north, and itâs only a few minutes to the Russo place. Here, he says, and puts the flashlight back in Nulaâs hand. Give it to Doctor Escalante tomorrow or the day after, or bring it by the club.
âThanks for everything, Nula says.
âNot a problem, Chacho says. Good luck.
âRight, Nula says. Now that itâs over itâs stopped.
âSo it goes, Chacho says, laughing, and he disappears into the darkness. They listen to the fading sound of his sandals, which must be completely soaked, snapping as they hit the ground. Gutiérrez stands motionless, looking into the darkness where the other has disappeared.
âSergio must have some good left in him, for his friends to treat us like this, he says in a low voice, but loud enough for Nula to hear. Then he turns and walks alongside Nula, who shines the light across the successive fragments of ground they venture over. When they reach the first streetlight, Nula turns off the flashlight, and though a few small, isolated ranches have begun to appear, they keep to the middle of the road. Three horses are pastured in the darkness, near an unplastered brick house. Out of curiosity, Nula turns on the flashlight and illuminates them, but the horses donât even look up: all three are in the same position, their necks angledtoward the ground, their teeth pulling at the grass, their heads still, two of them parallel to the street, facing opposite each other, and a third, whoâs only visible at the hindquarters, its tail shaking slightly. Nula turns off the flashlight.
When they reach the paved road Nula slips climbing up the embankment and Gutiérrez grabs his arm with the hand that carries the plastic bagâthe other holds up the multicolored umbrellaâto keep him from falling over. They cross the road so as to walk against traffic, and their steps become noisier, but also more firm, against the asphalt paving. For a while, they walk without speaking. They pass a brightly lit, empty gas station on the left, and on their right the main road into town, the illuminated, perpendicular streets that extend from the road toward the town center, the square, the levees built up against the floods, the river. Every so often, the headlights of an oncoming car force them to step onto the shoulder, into the mud and saturated weeds, and when the car passes they step back onto the pavement, moving more easily again. For a good stretch they seem to have forgotten each other, but every time headlights appear against the black backdrop of the lamp-lit, asphalt road, gleaming in the rain, they step sideways in a way that appears practiced and synchronized, without advance notice, deftly and exact, onto the shoulder. In the quickly approaching headlights the invisible rain takes on a fleeting, grayish materiality that is vaguely spectral, dense, and slanting, pierced by the beams, shining, and then, as they pass, is suddenly swallowed again by the darkness. And after the car has passed, Nula turns on the flashlight and the circle of white light, at once steady and mobile, restores it.
Of all the witnesses from that time , Gabriela Barco said, heâs turned out to be the most usefulâhe remembers everything . And Soldi: He can recite from memory entire books that the authors themselves donât even remember writing . After he first met Gutiérrez, by the swimming pool,
J. S. Cooper, Helen Cooper