Trafalgar - By Angelica Gorodischer Page 0,1

is one of those bars of which there aren’t many left, if there are any at all. None of that Formica or any fluorescent lights or Coca-Cola. Gray carpet—a little worn—real wood tables and real wood chairs, a few mirrors against the wood paneling, small windows, a single door and a façade that says nothing. Thanks to all this, inside there’s a lot of silence and anyone can sit down to read the paper or talk with someone else or even do nothing, seated at a table with a cloth, white crockery dishes, and real glass, like civilized people use, and a serious sugar bowl, and without anyone, let alone Marcos, coming to bother them.

I won’t tell you where it is because one of these days you might have adolescent sons or, worse, adolescent daughters who will find out, and good-bye peace and quiet. I’ll give you just one piece of information: it’s downtown, between a shop and a galería, and you surely pass by there every day when you go to the bank and you don’t even see it.

But Trafalgar came over to me at the table right away. He recognized me, because I still have the appearance—all fine cheviot and Yardley—of a prosperous lawyer, which is exactly what I am. We greeted each other as if we had seen each other a few days before, but I calculated something like six months had passed. I made a sign to Marcos that meant, let’s see that double coffee, and I went on with my sherry.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” I said.

“Well, yes,” he answered. “Business trips.”

Marcos brought him his double coffee and a glass of cold water on a little silver plate. That’s what I like about the Burgundy.

“Also, I got into a mess.”

“One of these days, you’re going to end up in the slammer,” I told him, “and don’t call me to get you out. I don’t deal with that kind of thing.”

He tried the coffee and lit a black cigarette. He smokes short ones, unfiltered. He has his little ways, like anyone.

“A mess with a woman,” he clarified without looking at me. “I think it was a woman.”

“Traf,” I said, getting very serious, “I hope you haven’t contracted an exquisite inclination for fragile youths with smooth skin and green eyes.”

“It was like being with a woman when we were in bed.”

“And what did you do with him or with her in bed?” I asked, trying to prod him a bit.

“What do you think one does with a woman in bed? Sing Schumann’s Lieder as duets?”

“Okay, okay, but tell me: what was there between the legs? A thing that stuck out or a hole?

“A hole. Better put, two, each one in the place where it belonged.”

“And you took advantage of both.”

“Well, no.”

“It was a woman,” I concluded.

“Hmmm,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

And he went back to his black coffee and unfiltered cigarette. Trafalgar won’t be hurried. If you meet him sometime, at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club or anywhere else, and he starts to tell you what happened to him on one of his trips, by God and the whole heavenly host, don’t rush him; you’ll see he has to stretch things out in his own lazy and ironic fashion. So I ordered another sherry and a few savories and Marcos came over and made some remark about the weather and Trafalgar concluded that changes of weather are like kids, if you give them the time of day, it’s all over. Marcos agreed and went back to the bar.

“It was on Veroboar,” he went on. “It was the second time I’d gone there, but the first time I don’t count because I was there just in passing and I didn’t even have time to get out. It’s on the edge of the galaxy.”

I have never known if it is true or not that Trafalgar travels to the stars but I have no reason not to believe him. Stranger things happen. What I do know is that he is fabulously rich. And that it doesn’t seem to matter a bit to him.

“I had been selling reading material in the Seskundrea system, seven clean, shiny little worlds on which visual reading is a luxury. A luxury I introduced, by the way. Texts were listened to or read by touch there. The rabble still does that, but I have sold books and magazines to everyone who thinks they’re somebody. I had to land on Veroboar, which