The Mad Toy (2 page)

There’s a point in the middle of the third chapter of
The Mad Toy
at which the reader is given for the first time the narrator’s full name: Silvio Drodman Astier. When I first read the novel, my initial reaction was to wonder if it was an anagram of the author’s real name. Of course it isn’t (no ‘B’, for starters, which is a problem if the name you’re looking for happens to be ‘Roberto’), but the impulse was excusable: one of the most immediately appealing things about Arlt’s novel is the sense it gives of being a record of events that we feel must actually have happened.

Where does this immediacy come from? In part it must derive from the way in which
The Mad Toy
, as is also the case with Arlt’s other novels, pins itself down firmly to a particular time and a particular place. If you take the time to look up on a map of Buenos Aires the street names Arlt mentions, you will see that most of the action of the novel takes place in a fairly small segment of a large city, the central districts of Caballito, Flores and Vélez Sársfield (where Arlt himself was born), with a couple of brief excursions to the docks and the Colegio Militar in El Palomar. For all his dreams of escape to London or Paris, dreams that are eventually only fulfilled to the extent that Silvio is offered a post in Comodoro, about 1,000 miles to the south of Buenos Aires,
The Mad Toy
is a local novel, alert to the detail of Silvio’s neighbourhood, the walls and
alleyways
, the cul-de-sacs, the milkbars, the green street lamps.

But the apparent realism of
The Mad Toy
serves to reveal the skill of the journalist, the professional observer of life. It is
possible
to be taken in by Arlt’s artistry to the extent of believing that Silvio must be an
alter ego
, but it is to do Arlt a disservice to think that Silvio is simply copied from life: the seemingly shapeless, picaresque nature of
The Mad Toy
is a grimy mask
for an extremely carefully developed and formally patterned novel, in which the superficial story of Silvio’s adventures is also a detailed psychological portrait of Silvio himself. Of course, to a certain extent Silvio is inspired by Arlt: what first novel isn’t autobiographical to at least some degree? But it is more correct to say that Arlt managed to dissociate himself from the
adolescent
he had been, and created, with the benefit of hindsight, a fantastic version of his youth.

Arlt was born in Buenos Aires in 1900. He was the son of immigrants: his father was a Prussian, and so strict as to be perceived as unnecessarily cruel by his son; Arlt’s mother was from Trieste. Arlt had two sisters: one of them died in infancy; the other in 1936; both from tuberculosis. At the age of eight, Arlt was expelled from school, and his formal education ended. He worked at a number of jobs: he was employed for a while in a bookshop, but he was also a housepainter, a mechanic, a dock worker, a factory hand… Eventually the newspaper
El Mundo
employed him to write a column: his so-called
Aguafuertes
(‘Etchings’) of contemporary Buenos Aires formed a witty commentary on the city’s low-life. He also worked as secretary to the novelist Ricardo Güiraldes. His first novel,
El juguete rabioso
(
The Mad Toy
) was published in 1926, and was followed by
Los siete locos
(The Seven Madmen
, 1929),
Los lanzallamas
(
The Flamethrowers
, 1931) and
El amor brujo
(
Bewitching Love
, 1932). In the 1930s Arlt began to write for the theatre, and by the end of his life was more or less
exclusively
a playwright. He died of a heart attack in 1942. Pieces of this biography crop up in
The Mad Toy
: Silvio’s sister is also called Lila and Silvio works in a bookshop for a while, but direct connections between Silvio and Roberto Arlt are few. However, there are a great number of subtextual connections, points at which Silvio can be seen as a projection of Arlt’s desires. Perhaps most significantly, as an act of revenge against
his sadistic father, Arlt chooses to have Silvio’s father commit suicide: ‘my father killed himself when I was very young.’

Rather than being noticeable for its fidelity to real life, one of the most striking things about
The Mad Toy
is the occasional irruption of fantasy into the realist texture of Arlt’s prose. This is visible on certain obvious occasions, for example the disturbing dream sequence in chapter three: Silvio pursued across an asphalt plain by a gigantic bony arm. However, there is also an
admixture
of fantasy into supposedly realistic scenes. Following this nightmare, once Silvio wakes up, the prose deliberately treads the line between reality and fantasy. His encounter in the hotel room with the young man who tries to seduce him, although full of realistic details (the dirty clothing, the sordid environment of the hotel where the meeting takes place), is extremely oneiric: the description of the homosexual’s neck with its ‘triangle of black hair’ is an obvious sexual metonymy, and the shouts of the
invisible
guests fighting outside add to the dreamlike nature of the meeting. During the night, Silvio observes the homosexual and feels ‘a horror’ that gradually turns into ‘conformity’. One of the details Silvio notices about the homosexual is how a ‘lock of his carefully-arranged hair fell down’ when he turned his head. The next morning when Silvio wakes up, the bed where the
homosexual
had been is empty: more than that, ‘there was no trace that anyone had even slept in his bed’, and Silvio notices that his own hair is hanging down over his forehead.

It would be possible, and not too far-fetched, to read the whole sequence as a dream, a manifestation of Silvio’s buried desires (see also his homoerotic relationship with Enrique Irzubeta in chapter one, a chapter which climaxes with a naked Silvio hugging Irzubeta as both of them hide from the police). What is beyond a doubt is that Arlt uses, as few Latin American writers before him had done, the fantastic and the dreamlike as keys to a heightened realism, ways to give us a fully-rounded
portrait of Silvio Astier. Silvio, with his love/hate
relationship
with Europe, his conviction that he is cut out for great things, his essential confusion and his frustration, is one of the first iterations of the modern Buenos Aires archetype, but in
The Mad Toy
the archetype is new, and Silvio is impressively individual.

Arlt is often celebrated as a writer who brought the language of the street into Argentinian letters, but this is not to suggest that he is an extremely colloquial writer: rather, he is a reporter who doesn’t soften the edges of the events he observes. Perhaps the closest comparison in English is with the early work of William S. Burroughs (
Junkie, Queer
), which presents low-life scenes in neutral prose, and reserves its linguistic innovation for the direct reporting of dialogue. Arlt’s dialogue is sparkily
accurate
, and stands slightly at odds with the occasionally clumsy soul-searching of Silvio’s conscience-stricken inner monologue. (The reader will have to decide if this clumsiness is authentically adolescent, or just… clumsy: I vote for the first option.)

One of the great things about Arlt’s accuracy in transcribing dialogue is that he is able to give the flavour of a particular
character
without resorting to stereotype or linguistic cliché. Think for example of the long complaint by Rebeca Naidath, which manages to capture a particularly Jewish style of narration without resorting to clichéd interpolations of Yiddish: ‘schleps’ or ‘schnozzes’ or ‘oy veys’. Of course, this makes Arlt tricky to translate: I should like to note here a major debt to my wife Marian Womack for going through the translation with me several times, on occasions word by word, always to its benefit. Mistakes and infelicities that remain are all mine, of course.

Finally, a note on the title. The original Spanish title of Arlt’s novel is
El juguete rabioso
. ‘Rabioso’ normally means ‘angry’, or ‘wild’: my choice of ‘mad’ has here to be taken in the sense of ‘that drives me mad’, or ‘don’t it just make you mad?’ –
annoyance rather than insanity. I understand Arlt’s title as
suggesting
something of the dehumanising fatalism of Gloucester’s ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods’: one can be as angry as one wishes, but our lives are controlled by forces we are unable to dominate. Certainly, the description of Silvio’s career, with its highs and lows, moments of great fortune and periods of despair, gives an overarching impression of an individual being shuttled helplessly from event to event.

– James Womack, 2013

When I was fourteen an old Andalusian cobbler, who had his shop next to an ironmonger’s with a green and white façade, in the archway of an old house in Avenida Rivadavia between South America and Bolivia Streets, initiated me into the delights and thrills of outlaw literature.

The front of the hovel was decorated with polychrome covers of pulp books that told the adventures of Montbars the Pirate and Wenongo the Mohican. On our way back from school, we kids took great pleasure in looking at the prints that hung,
discoloured
by the sun, on the door.

Sometimes we’d go in to buy half a pack of Barriletes, and the man would grumble about having to leave his bench to come and deal with us.

He was slump-shouldered, sunken-cheeked and bearded, and fairly lame as well, with a strange limp, his foot round like a mule’s hoof, with the heel pointing outwards.

Whenever I saw him I would remember a proverb my mother used a lot: ‘Beware the people marked by God.’

Normally he’d toss a few phrases my way; and as he looked for some particular half of a boot among the mess of shoetrees and rolls of leather, he would introduce me, with the bitterness of a born failure, to the stories of the most famous bandits of Spain, or else would recite a eulogy for a lavish customer whose boots he had polished and who had given him twenty centavos as a tip.

As he was a covetous man, he smiled to recall this client, and his filthy smile that didn’t succeed in filling out his cheeks would wrinkle his lip over his blackened teeth.

Although he was bearish he took a liking to me and for the
odd five centavos he’d rent me out the serial novels he had collected over long subscriptions.

And so, as he gave me the story of Diego Corrientes, he’d say:

‘Boy, thith guy… what a guy! He were more beautiful than a rothe and the milithia killed him…’

The artisan’s voice trembled hoarsely:

‘More beautiful than a rothe… but he wath born under an unlucky thtar…’

Then he would recapitulate:

‘Jutht you imagine… he give the poor wha’ he took from the rich… he had a woman at every farm in the mountainth… he were more beautiful than a rothe…’

In this lean-to that stank of paste and leather, his voice would awaken a dream of green mountains. There were gypsies
dancing
in the ravines… a mountainous and sensual land appeared before my eyes as he evoked it.

‘He were more beautiful than a rothe,’ and then this lame man would vent his sadness by tenderising a sole with his hammer, beating it against an iron plate which he supported on his knees.

Then, shrugging his shoulders as if to rid himself of an
unwelcome
idea, he would spit through his teeth into a corner, sharpening his awl on the whetstone with quick movements.

Later he would add:

‘You’ll thee, there’th a beautiful bit when you get to Doña Inethita and Uncle Clodfoot’th inn,’ and, seeing that I was taking the book with me, he’d shout a warning:

‘Careful, lad, it cothtth money,’ and turning back to his work he’d lower his head, the mouse-coloured cap pulled down over his ears, rummage in a box with his fingers all dirty from glue and, filling his mouth with nails, would carry on with his hammer, tap… tap… tap…

These books, which I would devour in their numerous ‘batches’, were stories of José María, the Lightning Bolt of
Andalusia, or of the adventures of Don Jaime the Bearded and other rogues, more or less authentic and picturesque, as could be seen from the prints that showed them as follows:

Horsemen on stupendously saddled colts, with extra-black side burns on their ruddy faces, their bullfighter’s ponytail covered by an extremely shiny
cordobés
hat, and a blunderbuss mounted in the saddletree. They would usually be offering, with a
magnanimous
gesture, a yellow bag of money to a widow standing at the foot of a little green hill with a babe in her arms.

Back then I dreamt of being a bandit and of strangling
libidinous
senior magistrates; I would right wrongs and protect widows, and I would be loved by exceptional maidens.

I needed a comrade for my youthful adventures, and this comrade was Enrique Irzubeta.

Enrique was a layabout who was always known by the edifying nickname of ‘The Faker’.

His story shows how one can establish a reputation; and how fame, once won, can nurture all those who wish to study the laudable art of leading the ignorant up the garden path.

Enrique was fourteen when he cheated the owner of a sweet factory, which is clear proof that the gods had decided what the destiny of our friend Enrique would be. But because the gods are crafty at heart, I am not surprised, as I write my memoirs, to discover that Enrique is now being put up in one of those hotels that the State provides for hooligans and rascals.

The truth is this:

A certain factory owner, in order to stimulate the sale of his products, announced a competition, with prizes for those who could put together a complete set of the flags of South America which he had had printed on the underside of each sweet wrapper.

The difficulty lay in finding the wrapper with the flag of Nicaragua, given its extreme scarcity.

These absurd contests, as you know, excite young boys, who, under the banner of a common interest, add up every day the results of their searches and the development of their patient investigations.

And so Enrique promised his neighbourhood friends, the carpenter’s apprentices and the dairyman’s sons, that he would fake the Nicaraguan flag if someone brought him a copy.

The lads were doubtful… they vacillated, knowing Irzubeta’s reputation, even though Enrique magnanimously offered as hostage two volumes of the
History of France
, written by M. Guizot, so that his probity would not be called into question.

And so the bargain was struck on the pavement in a cul-
de-sac
, with green-painted streetlights on the street corners, with few houses and tall brick walls. The blue curve of the sky sat atop the distant brushwood-topped walls, and the street was made all the more sad by the monotonous murmur of endless sawing and the cows mooing in the dairy.

Later I found out that Enrique, using Indian ink and blood, had reproduced the Nicaraguan flag so convincingly that it was impossible to tell the original from the copy.

A few days later Irzubeta showed off a brand new airgun that he later sold to a second-hand clothes dealer in Reconquista Street. This happened while brave Bonnot and valiant Valet were terrorising Paris.
1

I had already read the forty-odd volumes that the Viscount of Ponson du Terrail had written about Mother Fipart’s adopted son, the admirable Rocambole, and I aspired to become a bandit in the high style.

Well, one summer day, in the sordid neighbourhood grocery shop, I met Irzubeta.

The hot siesta hour weighed on the streets, and there was I, sitting on a cask of
yerba
,
2
chatting to Hipólito, who took
advant
age of his father’s being asleep to make bamboo-framework
aeroplanes. Hipólito wanted to be a pilot, ‘but first he had to solve the problem of natural stability’. At other times he was preoccupied with perpetual motion and would ask me about the possible implications of his musing.

Hipólito, with his elbows on a lard-stained newspaper,
between
the cheese counter and the red levers on the till, listened to my suggestions with the utmost attention:

‘A clock mechanism is no use for the propeller. Give it a tiny little electric motor and put the dry batteries in the fuselage.’

‘You mean like in submarines…’

‘Submarines? What submarines? The only danger is that the current could burn out the motor, but the plane’ll go much more smoothly and you’ll have a while before the batteries die.’

‘
Che
, couldn’t we make the motor work via a wireless telegraph? You’ll have to see how that might work. It’d be great, wouldn’t it?’

At this moment Enrique came in.

‘
Che
, Hipólito, my mum says do you want to give me half a kilo of sugar on tick.’

‘I can’t,
che
; the old man says that until you sort out your bill…’

Enrique frowned slightly.

‘I’m surprised to hear it, Hipólito.’

Hipólito added, conciliatory:

‘If it was down to me, you know… but it’s the old man,
che.
’ And he pointed at me, happy to be able to change the subject, and said to Enrique:

‘
Che
, don’t you know Silvio? He made the cannon.’

Irzubeta’s face lit up respectfully.

‘Oh, was that you? Well done. The guy who mucks out the dairy said it fired like a Krupp…’

While he was talking, I observed him.

He was tall and skinny. Over his rounded forehead, stippled with freckles, lustrous black hair waved in a lordly fashion. His eyes were the colour of tobacco, slightly slanted, and he wore a brown suit that had been fitted to his figure by hands unskilled in the couturier’s art.

He leant on the edge of the counter, balancing his chin on the palm of his hand. He seemed to be reflecting on something.

The adventure of my cannon was a resonant one, and pleasant to remember.

I bought an iron tube and several pounds of lead from some workers at the electricity company. With these elements I
fabricated
what I called a
culverin
or ‘bombard’. The manufacture went as follows:

Into a hexagonal wooden mould, lined on the inside with mud, I inserted the iron tube. The space between the two interior faces was filled with molten lead. After breaking the covering, I smoothed the underside with a thick file, and then used tin hoops to fix the cannon onto a carriage made out of the thickest planks from a box that had been used to store kerosene.

My culverin was a handsome object. It could be loaded with projectiles two inches in diameter, the charge for which I placed in powder-filled rough cotton bags.

As I stroked my little monster, I thought:

‘This cannon can kill, this cannon can destroy.’ And the
conviction
that I had created a danger both mortal and obedient filled me with a mad joy.

The neighbourhood kids examined it with admiration; it showed them my intellectual superiority, which from that moment prevailed whenever we went on expeditions to steal fruit or else discover buried treasure in the abandoned
territories
beyond the Maldonado, the stream that divided us from the parish of San José de Flores.

The day we fired the cannon was legendary. It was in the middle of a clump of Jerusalem thorn, itself in the middle of an enormous patch of waste ground in Avellaneda Street, before you got to San Eduardo, that we made the experiment. A circle of kids stood round me while I, my imagination much excited, loaded the mouth of the culverin. Then, in order to test its
ballistic
capacities, we aimed it at the zinc tank that was fixed to the wall of a nearby carpenter’s and provided it with water.

Filled with emotion I touched a match to the fuse; a little dark flame leapt under the sun and suddenly a terrible report enveloped us in a nauseating cloud of white smoke. For an instant we were stricken dumb with wonder: it seemed that in that moment we had discovered a new continent, or had by sorcery been translated into the masters of the earth. Suddenly someone shouted:

‘Scram! The fuzz!’

There was not sufficient time to make a dignified retreat. Two policemen were coming towards us at full pelt, we hesitated… and suddenly with great leaps and bounds we fled, abandoning the bombard to the enemy.

Enrique’s parting words:

‘
Che
, if you need any scientific data, then I’ve got a collection of
Around the World
magazine at home and I can lend them to you.’

From that day forth up until the night of our greatest
jeopardy
, our friendship was like the friendship of Orestes and Pylades.
3

Such a new picturesque world I discovered in the Irzubeta house!

Unforgettable people! Three men and two women, and the house governed by the mother, a woman the colour of salt and pepper, with small fish eyes and a large inquisitional nose, and the grandmother bent double, deaf, and blackened like a
tree-trunk
burnt in a fire.

With the exception of one absentee, who was the police officer, in that quiet cave everybody lay around unused, in sweet idleness, passing in their leisure time from the novels of Dumas to the
comforting
sleep of the siesta, and thence to amiable twilight gossip.

Their worries would spring up at the beginning of the month. At this point they would have to deter their creditors, sweet-talk the ‘Spanish bastards’,
4
calming the excesses of the plebeians who tactlessly came right up to the outer door and shouted, asking to be paid for the goods which they had ingenuously handed over on credit.

The owner of the cave was a fat Alsatian, called Grenuillet. Rheumatic, neurasthenic and in his seventies, he eventually got used to the irregularities of the Irzubetas, who paid him his rent every now and then. Previously he had tried unsuccessfully to evict them, but the Irzubetas were related to long-established judges and other people of that type from the conservative party, which was how they knew themselves to be immoveable.

The Alsatian eventually resigned himself to waiting for regime change, and the flagrant shamelessness of these idlers reached the point where they would send Enrique to ask the landlord for free tickets to the Casino; his son worked there as a porter.

Ah! And what well-spiced remarks, what Christian reflections could be heard from the local gossips, who held their conclave in the neighbourhood butcher’s shop, and commented devoutly on their neighbours’ lives.

This is what the mother of an extremely ugly girl said in
reference
to one of the young Irzubetas, who had, in a fit of lust, displayed his private parts to the maiden: