Summary of the previous chapter:
(After his former high school classmate Cabral’s sixty-year-old party, Lisandro receives comments from other guests about a tablemate, Bagarini, presumably next to him, whom he hadn’t even noticed. When the rumors grow about Bagarini, and his beneficent influence on some former colleagues, Lisandro goes to Borgovo and Plones to solve the enigma).
When Plones arrived at Borgovo’s office, Lisandro had already called Cabral, confirming Bagarini’s existence. In fact they were cousins. Naturally he had made him sit at the same table as Malbrán and Lysander himself.
“Ah,” Cabral commented: he had discovered that Bagarini had financed Malbrán’s painting exhibition. How barbaric. And to think that the cartoonist had to wait 50 years to find patrons.
Before cutting – he was a very busy man – Cabral added: -And you, when?
Lysander looked wordlessly at Plones and Borgovo, who had been listening to the conversation.
“I can’t believe it,” commented the painter. I have dedicated my life to painting. I have ruled out every other possibility. I went through some difficulties. I can do it, I’m not complaining, but I have never managed to exhibit, much less be a patron. And Malbrán, who saved himself as a public accountant and abandoned drawing at the age of 17, suddenly leaves the accounting firm and is the Van Gogh of the moment. He presents, he receives the press. How can it be? And I still fear something worse.
Plones questioned him with a raise of his eyebrows.
“Juliana,” Lisandro continued. He invited me to the “Atilio” party. Atilio Malbrán. “She wants you to go,” he told me. Who was he referring to? Obviously to Malbrán himself. And why did he walk out of the bar like he’d seen a ghost? It’s clear: I was sitting with Malbrán, they saw me coming and were ashamed. I loved her all through high school, we saw each other at the party. But Malbrán received the blessing. Why?
Borgovo waited for Lisandro to calm down before responding.
-About Juliana, I can’t go into more detail. Not Plones, not anyone. The reason why a woman makes this or that romantic decision is beyond human understanding., especially that of the woman in question. But regarding the Malbrán exhibition, I’ll venture a hypothesis: this Bagarini, who gave a financial tip to Morrone, as you told us, is evidently a patron. Not exclusively from Malbrán. Apparently, in just one party, he distributed his charitable contributions among at least two of his former colleagues. There are people like that. What we still don’t understand is why you don’t remember him, why you didn’t talk to him, why you didn’t even hear anything he said. Everything seems to indicate that, if you had joined the round, perhaps you would also have received funding for an exhibition in a gallery. Maybe next to Malbrán.
“I wouldn’t have accepted it,” Lysander insisted.
Maybe it really happened – Prones bets weakly -. You were angry at being invited to exhibit with a newcomer. You drank like a Cossack: a white steppe by heart.
“No,” Lysander refuted. Just a glass of wine: an extraordinary vintage.
“Maybe it was the wine of oblivion,” Borgovo joked.
But the three seemed to grasp a hidden truth in the joke.
Borgovo and Plones participated in the Malbrán exhibition. Lysander, despite knowing the importance of his presence in solving the case, could not bear it. He didn’t blame Malbrán, but he found the situation worryingly unfair. Also: See him with Juliana. As if he had stolen everything, according to Perales’ song.
The Malbrán exhibition also took place in Recoleta: the Pacheco gallery, around the corner from the Bullrich shopping center.
Borgovo and Plones returned bewildered.
“I should be an expert in time”, began Plones, in his watch shop at Parque Patricios, on Avenida Caseros, meeting Lisandro, “but it would take me a century to understand how such a mess could be financed”. The caricature I kept and framed, drawn by Malbrán himself, a portrait of Cabral, 40 years ago, was quite good. These oil paintings were a joke. I felt like someone disrespected me. Your painting of the melted clock is a work of art to me. I’m not a scholar. But I can determine when something has no merit to me. This is the case of Malbrán’s paintings hanging on the walls of the Pacheco Gallery.
“I’m signing up,” Borgovo confirmed. It’s not just that I didn’t like them: It was as if the painter, and I wouldn’t call him that, was making fun of me.. There was something cynical about the mediocrity of the work, which I wouldn’t even describe as that.
They were both silent and Lisandro demanded them with his gaze, as if he were asking for dessert.
Borgovo spoke:
I know what you ask me – he accepted – No: Juliana was not with Malbrán.
It is not true? – Lysander was surprised, and partly taken back.
It was -Plones denied it-. But on Bagarini’s arm. She is with Bagarini.
For Lisandro the sentence sounded grammatically or semiotically incorrect – he would not have been able to define either “grammar” or “semiotic” – but brutally graphic: he was with Bagarini. Suddenly, as if he wanted to escape the image of his beloved in the arms of another, he hid his eyes on a small, perfect golden clock, whose hands seemed to mark the time of the universe, on the counter: for here it was, what if it worked perfectly? . It was 3:30 in the afternoon. A horrible hour.
“It’s all over,” breathed Lysander.
Or has it just begun – challenged Plones -.
“We have come to a conclusion,” Borgovo said.
Lysander waited expectantly.
For an indefinite time the three remained silent. Lysander observed them with curiosity but without anxiety. A strange atmosphere filled the watch shop. Paradoxically, time passed differently there. Lisandro understood that this was the ceremony after which that duet revealed a truth.
“We just spoke with Bagarini – explained Borgovo -.
When do I eat? -Lysander was scared, without knowing why.
Right here. In these very minutes. Right under your nose, Plones clarified, if the verb was appropriate. He just left. He bought me a watch.
Instinctively Lisandro shifted his gaze towards the counter. The small and perfect gold watch was missing, as if a magician had made it disappear.
It is not the first time this has happened in the history of humanity -explained Plones-. An invisible man is invisible to everyone else. But on rare occasions – a few times in a millennium – the opposite happens: there is an individual who cannot perceive another. Only Lisandro is unable to perceive Bagarini. It’s not just that you don’t see it: you don’t sense it. It doesn’t exist for you. The atmosphere that is created around you in his presence is like that of the ink that the cuttlefish expels.
“A sort of limbo, a portion of emptiness,” Borgovo described.
Another gathering would probably have had more difficulty accepting that disorder of apparent reality. But they were a meteorologist, an investigator of bizarre cases and a painter. So they accepted the events and They did not resort to the superstition of denying the obvious. Lisandro remembered the scene in which Juliana spoke alone at the party, presumably on her cell phone with Bluetooth headphones, like many other contemporary interlocutors; but after her revelation, she discovered that she was actually talking to Bagarini. He had also met them at the Recoleta bar, without seeing the same companion.
There isn’t enough time to reveal its mysteries – Lisandro himself tried to close the episode -. Plones took note respectfully.
Source: Clarin
