I was set up in one of the entrances to the arcade, protected from the rain falling on the sidewalk, and saw the guy coming south to north on San Martín. He stopped a second in front of the window to a shoe store and then went in the tobacconist that divides the arcade walkway in half. He bought pipe tobacco and left. I followed. He walked four blocks up San Martín and turned right toward the Plaza de Mayo, and after walking around the block he turned back onto San Martín, this time north to south, on the opposite sidewalk. I was following some forty meters back, not losing a step. In the entrance to a shop he took shelter from the rain and lit his pipe, taking three or four deep drags to make sure it was lit well. I stopped no more than two meters away, pretending to look in the window of the shop where he had stopped. When I realized that it was a lingerie shop, I turned away quickly and went ahead a few meters, but I stopped again because the guy was walking so slow that I was already ten meters ahead. I waited on the corner, and he passed next to me, stopping a second to open his black umbrella because the rain was getting heavier every second. The guy went six more blocks north to south on San Martín and then turned back, south to north again, on the opposite sidewalk. I didn’t lose a step the whole trip. He was walking so slow it was crazy. He passed by the illuminated walkway of the arcade again and at the first corner turned toward the bus station. At the entrance to the platforms he stopped, grabbed the pipe he had been chewing on the whole time, and with his mouth open gazed at the post office on the opposite sidewalk, where the windows were completely illuminated. The guy looked the building up and down, his mouth open the whole time, raising his head so high that at one point I thought he was going to fall backward. Then he went to the ticket window to Rosario and bought a fare. I went up to the window and got close enough to hear that the ticket was for the next day, at eight-ten in the morning. Then he went out onto the platforms, opened his umbrella again, crossed to the opposite sidewalk, and started walking back the way he had come. On the corner of 25 de Mayo he stopped in front of the windows of the Monte Carlo bar and looked in curiously. Apparently he didn’t see anything interesting because he turned around and kept walking north up 25 de Mayo. At the corner he closed his umbrella and went in the Palace Hotel. I went in after. The hotel lobby was incredibly bright and clean. There wasn’t a doormat, and yet there wasn’t a single muddy puddle on the 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.