The Seven Madmen (24 page)

"But it's all lies!" he heard Hipólita say in his memory.

"At the time I believed him. And he went on:

" 'If you knew what all that woman's been through. Once, after her seventh abortion, she was in such despair she was all set to leap out the fourth floor window. Suddenly this terrific thing—Jesus appeared to her on the balcony and blocked her way.' "

Ergueta was still smiling. Suddenly he reached into his pocket for a picture which he showed Erdosain.

The delicious creature in the image stirred him somehow.

She was not smiling. In the space behind her grew palm trees and ferns in profusion. Sitting on a bench, she kept her head slightly bent over, looking at a magazine that rested on her knees, since her legs were crossed. It made her dress hang like a bell suspended above the level of the grass. Her high-rising hairdo and her hair pulled back off her temples made her forehead seem wider and lighter, like a moon. On each side of her delicate nose, her eyebrows arched, their thin line well suited to eyes that were slightly slanted in a delicately oval face.

And looking at her, Erdosain realized that Hipólita's presence would never arouse him sexually, and that certainty cheered him somehow, so that he began to imagine the delight of caressing with his fingertips the chin of the unknown young woman and hearing the sand crunch under the soles of her shoes. Then he murmured:

"How lovely she is!
...
She must be very sensitive."

How different she turned out to be!

The train was passing through Villa Luro. Among piles of coal and gas meters half seen through the fog the arc lights gleamed sadly. Great black gaps loomed in the sheds that harbored the trains, and the red and green lights, hanging at irregular distances, made the signals of the trains more gloomy yet.

How different the Lame Whore had turned out to be! But still, he remembered how he had said to Ergueta:

"How lovely she is!
...
she must be very sensitive."

"Yes, she is; also she's got a very pleasing manner about her. The whole thing with her is really nice from my point of view. Wait till those guys who didn't think I was a real Communist find out. I gave up this fancy virgin to marry a prostitute. But Hipólita has a soul that transcends all that. She likes this wild thing we're doing, great deeds from noble hearts. We'll do great things together, because the times are ripe."

Erdosain took up the pharmacist's phrase:

"So you think the times are ripe?"

"Yes, terrible things must come to pass. Don't you remember you once told me President Roosevelt had spoken in praise of the Bible?"

"Yes
...
but a long time ago." Erdosain answered vaguely because he really did not recall having quoted anything like that to the pharmacist. The man continued:

"Besides which, I have read the Bible extensively—"

"It doesn't seem to have affected the way you live—"

"That's not for you to judge," said Ergueta severely. Erdosain looked at him, annoyed, the pharmacist smiled his puerile smile and as the café owner placed one more half liter of beer on the counter, he said:

"See the mysterious words one finds in the Bible: 'And I will save the lame woman, and bring in the woman who has gone astray, and I will give them a place of honor in every country of confusion.' "

An amazing silence was occurring in the diner. All one could see was heads bending over and groups absorbed in the comings and goings of the flies on café tables. A thief was showing a diamond ring to a colleague and both kept their heads bending over the stones in question.

A ray of sun came in a half-open milk-glass door like a streak of sulphur slicing through the blue fog of the café.

The other man was saying again: "And I will save the lame woman, and bring in the woman who has gone astray," insistently and with a malicious wink as he said again, "and I will give them a place of honor in every country of confusion—"

"But Hip
ó
lita is not lame—"

"Well, no, but she has gone astray and I am the fraudulent man, the 'son of perdition.' I've wandered from brothel to brothel, from grief to grief in my search for love. I thought it was physical love I sought and only reading that book was I able to see the light: my heart was looking for divine love. See? A heart knows where to go. You're messed up, you need to carry out your will, but you fail
...
and why do you fail
...
a mystery
...
then one day, all of a sudden, no way of knowing how, the truth appears. And look, see what my life has been. 'Son of perdition' is my life for you. Papa, before he died in Cosquin, wrote me the worst letter, he was coughing blood and raining reproaches on me, see? And he would not even sign his name, all he put was 'Your father, as I am cursed to be.' You see?" and again he winked convulsively and raised his eyebrows, making Erdosain wonder:

"But surely he's gone mad."

They left the diner. Cars ran up and down Corrientes sending back flashes of sun, crowds went by making their way to work, and under the yellow awnings women's faces seemed rosier than usual. They went inside the café Ambos Mundos. Around the café tables sat sharpsters, playing cards, dice, or shooting pool. Ergueta looked all around, then, spitting, he said aloud:

"All pimps here. Ought to hang them all without looking at their faces."

Nobody seemed to take it personally.

Erdosain, somehow, was left pondering some words Ergueta had said.

"I was seeking divine love." Ergueta was living a frenzied, sensual life. He was always to be found in gambling houses or bordellos, dancing, drinking heavily, becoming involved in awful fights against dead-beats and pimps. Some impulse was always pushing him into dreadfully rough scenes.

One evening, Ergueta was in Flores Plaza, by Niers's Confectioners. The perpetually drunken Delavene was alongside, having become a lawyer a month before, and also some more unsavory individuals from the Club de Flores. They were harassing passersby. Suddenly Ergueta saw a Spaniard approaching and unzipped his fly so when the man passed, he urinated onto him. He was a prudent enough individual to merely walk off complaining. Then the pharmacist said looking straight at Delavene who was given to bragging:

"All right
...
could you piss on the next to come by?"

"Sure."

Everyone was happy, because Delavene was likely to do anything. A man came around the corner and Delavane began urinating. The stranger moved a bit over, but the "Basque," nearly knocking him over, drenched him.

Something awful happened.

Wordlessly the man came to a halt; the gang was whistling and laughing at him, but then suddenly he pulled out a revolver, everyone heard a bang, and Delavene fell to his knees grabbing at his abdomen. He lay dying for a long, terrible time. Before he died, he nobly admitted he had been the one to start up the scene, and when Ergueta was drunk and heard Delavene's name, he would kneel and make a cross on the dusty floor with his tongue.

While rolling a smoke, the pharmacist answered Erdosain concerning Delavene.

"Yes, he had a noble heart
...
a friend like him is rare. Someday I'll make somebody pay for him," but coming back to more immediate concerns, he said, "Ah! I have been pondering so much lately. And I wondered how appropriate could it be for a sterile, diseased, vice-ridden, immoral man to marry a virgin—"

"So Hipólita
...
knows?"

"She knows everything. Besides, a virgin deserves a virgin name. A man whose soul and body are virgin. So it will be some day. Can you imagine a handsome, virginal, macho youth?"

"Yes, so he should be ideally," whispered Erdosain.

The pharmacist looked at his watch.

"Do you have something to do?"

"Yes, in a moment I'm going home to see Hip
ó
lita."

"I was dumbfounded," Erdosain later told the compiler of this chronicle. "His family lived in a big, fancy house and you could nearly feel souls creeping around like snails, absolutely conservative and in a rut." Erdosain asked him:

"What?
...
She is in your house already?"

"I had worked out a fictionalized version of her life. She was opposed, or really, she said she would go only if she could go as who she really was."

"So she would have gone as herself?"

"She would have, but I finally managed to change her mind. I told Mama I had whisked her away when she was leaving for Europe with an uncle and his wife—a made-up episode, of course."

"And so Mama
...
"

Erdosain was inclined to ask if his mother swallowed such a lie, as if looking at Hipólita was sufficient to inform an observer about her disordered life.

"And how did Mama react when she found out?"

"She made me get her out immediately. When I introduced her, she hugged her and said: 'Has he been respectful with you, my dear?' And she, lowering her eyes, said, 'Yes, Mama.' Which was true. You have to see that Mama and my sister Sara were won over by Hipólita."

Erdosain had a feeling these poor losers had all embarked on a disaster course. Nor had he been wrong, and now, in the train, recalling how his hunch had been borne out, he pondered while passing through Liniers: "How odd, first impressions never lie," and when he had asked Ergueta when he would be married, he had answered:

"Tomorrow we're leaving for Montevideo. We'll be married there, so if we need a divorce, we can have one." When he said those words, again he winked, smiling cynically, and added: "I'm no dummy, I keep myself covered in case."

Erdosain was shocked by such careful planning. He was unable to hold back, and said:

"Hey—you're not even married and already you've got a plan for divorce under Uruguayan law. Is this some kind of communist garbage? You know, you're as much a cardsharp as you ever were."

The pharmacist was as impervious as a loan shark who no longer cares what he is called, as long as he is paid as well as cursed. Coolly, he replied:

"Look, you screw the world or you get screwed." Erdosain was amazed by such crudity. He thought of the delicious creature bearing up under such massive brutishness, under a lowering sky full of dust clouds set ablaze by a ghastly yellow sun. She would wilt like a fern placed in a field of volcanic rocks. Now Erdosain looked the pharmacist over again, this time with fury.

The gambler noticed his friend's malevolent glare and said, "Look, kid, you have to do something against this society. Some days I suffer unbearably. It seems as if all men had become animals. You want to go out and preach extermination or set up a machine gun at every intersection. You see? Terrible times are coming.

"The son will rise up against the father and the father against the son. One must do something against this accursed society. That's why I'm marrying a prostitute. The Scriptures put it well: 'And you, son of man, you will judge the bloodthirsty city and you will show it all its abominations.' And then this other passage, listen to this other bit: 'And she loved the ruffians whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose outpourings like the outpourings of horses.
'
" And gesturing toward the pimps who were playing cards around the tables he said: "There they are. Just go to the Royal Keller, the Morzzoto, the Pigalle, the Maipú, they're all over the place. Dissipated energy. Even those rats are bored, in the last analysis. When the revolution comes, they'll hang them or send them to the front lines. Cannon fodder. I could have been like them but I gave it up. Now terrible times are coming. That's why the Book says: 'And I will save the lame woman and I will take in the woman who has gone astray and give her a place of praise and renown in all the land of confusion.' Because today the city has fallen in love with its ruffians and they dragged down the lame woman and the woman who has gone astray, but they will have to humble themselves and kiss the feet of the lame woman and the woman gone astray."

"But do you love Hipólita or not?"

"Of course I love her. Sometimes it's like she'd come down a staircase from the moon. Wherever she is, everyone will feel happy."

And for a moment Erdosain could believe that she had come serenely down from the moon so that all men might flock to bathe in the sunshine of her simplicity.

The pharmacist went on:

"Now the days of blood are coming, kid, days of vengeance. Men are weeping inside their souls. But they don't want to listen to the weeping of their angel. And the cities are like prostitutes, in love with their thugs and bandits. It can't go on like that."

He looked at the street an instant, and then, apparently absorbed in listening to some sound from within, the gambler said in a voice resonant with pathos in that café of boredom:

"A man shall come, an angel, I don't quite know. He will kneel in the middle of the Avenida de Mayo. Cars will stop, bank managers and people from swanky hotels will come rushing out to their balconies and gesticulating angrily say:

" 'Hey, what do you want, punk? Don't bother us here.' But he'll rise up, and when they see his sad face and the fever ablaze in his eyes, their arms will fall to their sides, and he'll turn to those pigs, he'll talk to them, he'll ask them why they did evil, why they neglected the orphan and stomped man underfoot and made an inferno of life, which was so beautiful. And they won't know what to answer, and the voice of the last of the angels will resound, giving them goose bumps, and the greatest bastards will be in tears."

The pharmacist's huge mouth was contorted with anguish. He seemed to be chewing on some bitter, rubbery poison.

"Yes, it's necessary for Christ to come again. The dregs, the barrel-scrapings of humanity are still suffering. And if he doesn't come, then who will save us?"

The Espilas

The train pulled into Ramos Mejia. The station clock said eight at night. Erdosain got off.

A dense blanket of fog lay over the muddy streets of the town.

When he found himself alone on Calle Centenario, hemmed in fore and aft by walls of fog, he remembered they were to murder Barsut the next day. It was true. They were going to kill him. He would have liked to be in front of a mirror so he could see his own body, a murderer's body, it was so odd sounding to be the very "I" who with such a crime would cut whatever linked him to the rest of mankind.