As well as the Chileans, there was another foreigner, a Uruguayan called Washington Mena; he was an insignificant person, without any noteworthy characteristics. The other one with long hair was a young Argentinean, about twenty, called Higinio Gómez (Higidio, actually, but he said Higinio because it was less embarrassing), who was spectactularly ugly: he had what used to be called a “pockmarked” face, due in fact to a case of chronic acne, as well as that long hair, almost as long as Abel’s, but curly. Then there was one they called The Bullshit Artist behind his back, although his name was Carlos Soria. While the others laughed at the fat guy’s joke, he just mumbled and ended up making openly sarcastic remarks. The joker from Santiago del Estero turned out to be the most curious character of them all, partly, in fact mainly, because he was spherically fat. That transformed him. He also fancied himself as a wit and even a Don Juan. His name was Lorenzo Quincata; he spoke very little and always gave careful consideration to what he was going to say, but even so, no one would have mistaken him for an intelligent young man.
Soria started running down Santiago del Estero and its inhabitants. They let him talk, but teased him all the while. He said that in Santiago they drank hot beer. Really? How come? He’d been there, of course, passing through; nothing could have persuaded him to stay on those sweltering plains. One day, in a bar, he had sampled that strange beverage (strange for him, anyway). They used a wheelbarrow to bring the beer in from the yard, where it had been sitting in full sun; it was hot like soup, he said. Someone asked him: Why the wheelbarrow? To bring the cartons in, of course, what else could they use? How many cartons, they asked, suspecting him of exaggerating. First he said thirty-six, then he said eight, but it wasn’t really clear which number he meant. He pointed out that there had been twenty people drinking. Some of the builders were laughing so hard they cried. That’d have to be a record, wouldn’t it, they said. If he drank thirty-six cartons of hot beer all on his own.
Only in Santiago del Estero…., said Raúl Viñas, laughing too. He clinked his glass with Quincata. Viñas was a Santiago man himself, he explained, but from Santiago de Chile, which made all the difference.
Soria pointed out once again that there were twenty people drinking, a whole team of road workers. The cartons of bottles were sitting in the yard, out in the sun. Did they know what his belly was like, after drinking it? Well, round, of course. As for how it felt, best not to imagine that, or even try. And yet they did.
Castro reminded Viñas about a famous liar they had known in Chile, a man who, whenever he met someone, would say that that he had just crossed the Andes from Argentina, braving extremely risky or at least unusual conditions, coming through unlikely passes, or right over the mountain peaks, crossing snowfields, always on foot, alone, setting off on the spur of the moment. Each time he ran into someone he knew, he came out with the same story, or rather, a variation. But sometimes he ran into the same person again quite soon afterward, and then he had to invent the opposite journey, since he couldn’t always be crossing from Argentina into Chile, without crossing back the other way at least occasionally, indeed just as often, even in the world of the imagination with its somewhat flexible laws. It was a pretext for doubling his lies.
“Lorenzo”, they felt, was an incongruous name. They all thought it suited its owner, but at the first stirring of doubt, they flipped over to the opposite opinion. It was the same with “Washington,” and again with “Higinio,” and so on through the names, even the commonest ones, like “Abel,” “Raúl” and “Juan.” It would have been absurd to claim that people looked like examples of their names, and yet, in a curious way, they did. The worst (or the best) thing was that in any given case you could convince yourself of a name’s appropriateness or inappropriateness simply by listening to the other person’s arguments, and if that became the norm, even within a small community of friends or colleagues, it would be like seeing ghosts emerge. They were pouring out wine for familiar ghosts. (The real ones had disappeared a while before, as they did every day when the smell of meat rose from the grill, as if it were detrimental to them. But they would reappear later on, more active than ever, at siesta time, which was the high point of their day, in summer at least; in winter, it was dusk.)
This reminded the master builder of certain regrettable episodes from the past; some of the men present had been working with him for quite a few years, and they joined in the reminiscing. There was the time they had put up a building, like this one, or even bigger, with materials and tools that were hopelessly inadequate, especially the tools. You know the way there’s always some liar exaggerating outrageously, he said. Well, it was really like that. But in this case, the witnesses, including Carlitos Soria (The Bullshit Artist), were not going to let him get away with lying. Which building? they asked him. The one on Quintino Bocayuva. Oh, that one! They all remembered how terrible it had been. Torture. Instead of…. just about everything, really, they had had to make do with, well, anything at all, whatever came to hand. Instead of wheelbarrows, they used some old baby carriages they found dumped in a vacant lot. Instead of buckets, flowerpots (they had to block up the hole in the bottom). And it was the same with everything else: a truly abject scramble for makeshift solutions, which had scarred them for life.
In less than an hour, and the time flew by because of the interesting conversation, every last mouthful of food disappeared, including the bananas and the peaches and the bread. There was really nothing strange about that: the whole idea was to eat it up. With the wine, however, it was different. In a sense, drinking it was not the whole idea. And yet that is what they had been doing, and they continued: instead of coffee after the meal, they had a glass of wine, or two. The drinking, in fact, had become absolute. Inevitably, though, some drank more than others. The three adult Chileans (young Abel Reyes was drinking Coca-Cola) were the quickest, and so attained the highest level of stupefaction, to the point where they could hardly say a coherent good-bye when the others began to leave. And yet they still had some more drinking to do. They did it sitting down, staring into space, smiling vaguely. The others finally vanished, and the three of them underwent a kind of collapse. They felt as if they had imbibed the whole world, but in tiny doses, or as if a joy outside of them had begun to spin, sweeping them up. And, what is more, although they were off their faces by now, it seemed they could go on drinking, go on filling the glasses and lifting them to their lips. At least they still had that feeling, like a giant smile inside each one of them.
At four in the afternoon, just after the last of the builders had gone, Elisa came down to see what state her husband was in. She had to look around twice to find him, slumped as he was. She wasn’t too alarmed, but she did check to see if there were any others left. And sure enough, the other two Chileans were there. As it happened, Pocketman emerged from a brief spell of unconsciousness and volunteered to help get her husband upstairs. She accepted: Raúl Viñas had come around sufficiently for the two of them to suffice. Almost restored to his normal lucidity by the climb, Pocketman offered to chain up the gate from the outside, although he wouldn’t be able to lock it. After saying good-bye, he went back down. The remaining Chilean, Castro, was still sleeping, but when Pocketman gave him a shake, he woke up completely, if in a bad mood, and since they were both going in the same direction, and a fair way (they had to take the train), they headed off together, placidly, though not entirely steady on their legs. Pocketman kept his promise of chaining up the gate, so unless someone took the trouble of looking for the absent lock, the building appeared to be securely shut. It wasn’t really, but there weren’t any passersby. It was siesta time, the quietest and most deserted time of day, and the hottest. The silence was complete.