The Seven Madmen (31 page)

His hyperactive anger made the blood pound in his veins. It surged bounding through his sturdy body, tensed up as if ready for an attack. He felt stronger than ever, the strength of a man who can use his gun.

The electric light swung with each thundering boom from the storm, but the Astrologer, sitting with his back to the bed, legs crossed, on top of the trunk, chin in hand and his elbow propped on his knee, kept his eyes fixed on the five dummies whose raggedy shadows played across the pink wall.

Behind him, the rain that was coming in the window made a puddle on the floor, the questions went back and forth in silence, at times a sharp crease shot down the middle of the Astrologer's forehead, then his motionless eyes, in his rhomboid-shaped face, answered his own unspoken questions by blinking according to how he felt, and he remained there like that until day broke, then, getting off the trunk, he turned away ironically from the five puppets, leaving them there in the solitude of the room, bobbling about like five hanged men.

He hesitated an instant, then he swiftly went down the stairs, past the portico, and strode off toward the stables where Barsut was confined.

It had stopped raining. The clouds had broken up, leaving a bit of sky with a yellow piece of moon visible.

The Revelation

While all this was going on, in Las Mercedes Hospital, Ergueta reached a state he was later to call "the knowledge of God." It happened like this.

He awakened at dawn in the room. A parallelepiped of moonlight painted a blue rectangle on the whitewashed wall by his bed. Through the window bars the sky showed, boxed by the window frame, a sky the same porous, arid blue as plaster tinged with methylene. Between the bars, a trickle from a star trembled.

Ergueta scratched his nose thoroughly, although he felt no great urgency. He grasped that he was in the madhouse, but that was "no problem of his."

He might have worried if they had shut up his spirit, but the one locked up in the madhouse was really his body, his body that weighed ninety kilos, and now he felt somewhat burned remembering how he had made his rounds of the brothels. And he could not help reviewing, like some opprobrious horror show, the sensual life in which he had wallowed. But then, what did his spirit have to do with the excesses of his flesh?

It was such an evident distinction to his mind that it astonished him that the doctors still could not see the difference.

Ergueta marveled at his discovery. He was no longer a man, but rather a spirit, "a sensation purely of soul," with its borders clearly delineated within the fleshly framework of his body, like clouds in the endless spaces.

He was light as a feather. Other nights he had felt able to go outside his body, slough it off like a suit. Knowing he could, suddenly grasping the fact made him a little bit afraid. At moments his epidermis seemed only to touch the outermost edges of his soul, so that the equilibrium between his body, about to drop off behind, and his skin, made him nauseous. It was like being in an elevator falling.

Besides, he was afraid of willing his soul to leave his body, because if it got destroyed, how would he get back inside? The orderly had a scoundrel's face, and though Ergueta would have explained to him how body and soul must reunite, he did not feel it was quite safe to. But, as the first impression wore off, he began to relish the thought he was a mere weak child, which did not prevent him from also laughing in his bed there at what a farce it was to restrain his ninety kilos when the whole time he could roam anywhere he felt like
...
but no
...
this was no game. His goodness could not allow that. And how fine it felt to be so full of brotherly love! His mercy spread to cover the world, like a cloud over the roofs of the city. His body lay ever farther below.

Now he could see it as if at the bottom of a box, the sanatorium nestled among the white cubes of houses like one more cube, the streets tinged blue among great overhanging shadows, the green of neon signs glowing feebly, and space flooded his interior as the ocean would a sponge, while time ceased to exist.

Great lengths of space swooped through his delight. Ergueta felt quiescence, a reservoir of brotherly love, willed by something outside him. Thus would he enjoy the dry pool along with the rain that heaven sent him.

Of the earth onto which he beamed his love, he saw the very edges, round, greenish, with the blue ether lapping up against them. And as it was not natural to remain silent, he only managed to say:

"Thank you
...
thank you, my Lord."

He felt no curiosity. His humility grew stronger in reverence.

Up in the blue expanse he caught sight of a sudden upcropping of rocks. A golden light bathed the rocks in spite of the night, and the blue in the distance fell away into great gullies from the golden heights. Ergueta, with his body restored, advanced with cautious step, his eyes fixed and wary in his hawklike profile.

Naturally he could not feel tranquil because his body had sinned innumerable times, and because he understood that his face, despite the grave expression it now bore, had the energetic lines and the fierceness of a hardened sinner, the sort he had modeled himself on when he was young, out in the slums, and in roving gangs.

But his spirit was contrite and perhaps that was enough, though he still said:

"What will the Lord say when he gets a good look at me? How am I to show myself before Him?" And looking automatically at his shoes he saw they were in need of a shine, which made him feel worse. "What will the Lord say when he gets a good look at me and sees what a pimp and hustler I look like? He'll ask about my sins
...
he'll remember all the hustles I pulled off
...
and what will I say in answer?—that I didn't know? But how can I claim that, if he left proof of his existence in all the prophets?"

He went back to looking at his rundown, dirty shoes.

"And he'll tell me, 'You're a pathetic slob
...
a shameless low-life sort and to think that you went to the university. You were out hustling when you could have used your gambling money to console the orphan, to ease life's sufferings. And you sullied your soul in orgies after I gave it to you, and you dragged your guardian angel with you through brothels and he wept behind you, while your fleshy mouth was full of abominations
...
' And the worst of it is I can't deny anything. How can I deny my sin? What a life of hustling, my God!"

The sky over his head was a blue plaster dome. Remote planets like oranges swung in ellipses, and Ergueta looked humbly at the golden stones.

Suddenly a great upheaval shattered his modest state of mind. He looked up and to his left, standing ten steps away from him, he saw the Son of Man.

The Nazarene, cloaked in a sky blue tunic, turned his bony profile to him with one glowing, almond-shaped eye visible.

Ergueta's soul was cast down, but his body could not kneel, because "if you want people to think you're cool, you have to watch your image," not go on your knees to a Jewish carpenter, but still he felt a sob wrack his soul and in the silence he held out his arms, hands clasped, to the silent god.

He felt his tough hide becoming soaked through and through with devotion to Him.

Silent, he looked at Jesus standing there among the rocks. Ergueta's eyes filled. He could only wish there were someone around he could beat up to show the Lord how much he loved Him, and the silence was so unbearable that, though nearly overcome with feeling, he managed to blurt out this humble entreaty:

"I'd like to change my ways, but I can't."

Jesus stood looking at him.

"Believe me
...
you don't know what it means to me to tell you I love you."

Ergueta turned away, took three paces in the opposite direction, then, facing Jesus again, stopped.

"I've committed every sin. I've gotten myself into some pretty messy business
...
I'd like to repent and I can't
...
I want to kneel
...
truly, to kiss your feet, you who were crucified for us. Ah! if you knew all I've wanted to say to you but it's slipped away from me
...
and yet I love you. Is it because we're here man to man?"

Jesus looked at him. A new smile graced the face of Jesus. Ergueta was silent an instant, then blushing he murmured timidly:

"Oh! How good you are." He was another man, half-crazed in ecstasy. "How good! You have bestowed your smile upon me, a sinner. Do you see? You gave me your smile. By your side, believe me, I'm like a child, a kid. I'd spend my whole life adoring you, I'd be your constant defender. Now I will sin no more, all my life I will think of you, and God help anyone who questions your sovereignty—I'll make him take it back and stuff it down him—"

Jesus looked at him.

Then Ergueta, wanting to offer his best, said: "I kneel before you." He went forward a few steps and coming up in front of Jesus bent his head, put one knee to the golden stone, and was about to prostrate himself when Jesus reached out his finely chiseled hand, placed it on his shoulder and said:

"Come. Follow me and sin no more, because your soul is as beautiful as that of the angels that sing the Lord's praises."

He tried to speak, but empty space and silence enfolded him dizzyingly. Ergueta grasped that he had entered into the knowledge of God. It was clearly so, because when he turned in the direction of some voices resounding in the darkened hall, a madman who had been mute from birth exclaimed, looking at him in amazement:

"You look like a man from heaven."

Ergueta looked at him in astonishment.

"Yes, because just like the saints, you have a glowing disk around your head."

Ergueta, gently seized with fear, leaned against the wall.

A one-eyed madman, who had so far kept silent, exclaimed:

"Miracles
...
you do miracles. You made the mute speak."

The conversation woke up a third lunatic, who spent his days killing imaginary lice between his calloused, work-beaten fingers, and the bearded fellow, turning his pale face, said:

"You came to raise the dead."

"And make the blind see," interrupted the mute.

"And one-eyed people, too," asserted the madman with one eye, "because now I can see out of this side."

The mute, propping himself up with both elbows dug into the mattress, went on:

"But you're not yourself, it's God inside your body."

Ergueta, overcome, affirmed:

"True, brothers, I'm no longer myself
...
it's God who's inside me— How could I, a miserable whore-master, do miracles?"

Then the louse killer, sitting on the edge of the bed and swinging his bare feet, suggested:

"Why don't you do another miracle?"

"I came not for that, but to preach the word of the Living God."

The louse killer hiked one foot up on his knee and malevolently insisted:

"You ought to work a miracle."

The mute put his pillow on the floor of the hall and, sitting on it, said:

"I won't speak anymore."

Ergueta squeezed his temples, stunned by what he was seeing. The one-eyed man reflected amicably:

"Yes, you should revive a dead person."

"But there's no dead person here!"

The one-eyed man limped up to Ergueta, took his arm and nearly dragged him over to one of the beds, where a little man with a round head and enormous nose lay unmoving.

The mute came up, compressing his lips.

"Don't you see he's dead?"

"He died this afternoon," muttered the one-eyed man.

"I tell you the man's not dead," exclaimed Ergueta in irritation, convinced the others were making sport of him; but the louse killer leaped from his bed, came over to the other bed, bent over the little man with the round head and pushed the unmoving body so it would fall off, right onto the floor, where it thumped dully and lay between the two beds with its legs pointed up like the Y-shape of a freshly pruned tree.

"Now you see he's dead?"

The four madmen remained in consternation around the Y-shape, inside the rectangle of pale blue moonlight, with the wind billowing out their shirts.

"You see he's dead?" repeated the bearded man.

"Work a miracle," the one-eyed man begged. "How are we to believe in Him if you don't work a miracle? Go on, it's no big thing for you."

The mute, bending his head down repeatedly, made signs of acquiescence to Ergueta.

Soberly he leaned over the body; he was about to pronounce the words of Life, but suddenly the walls of the room spun the planes of the cube before his eyes, a dark wind howled in his ears and again he caught sight of the three madmen standing inside the blue rectangle of moonlight, their nightshirts flaring out with the wind, while he slipped down a tangent that cut through the giant whirlwind of darkness, into unconsciousness.

The Suicide

Erdosain remained there at the Lame Woman's feet perhaps for an hour. The emotions he had passed through were dissolved into sluggishness now. He felt a stranger to everything that had happened that day. Anguish and malevolence grew hard inside him like mud in the sun. He remained, nonetheless, immobile, in the utter grip of the sleepiness that came raveling forth, dark and heavy, from his tiredness. But his forehead wrinkled. And through the mist and darkness grew his other despair, the hopeless fear of becoming lost like a ghost at the edge of a granite dike. The gray waters formed bands of different heights that ran counter to one another. Iron launches carried half-glimpsed people to remote emporiums. Also there was a woman decked out like a
cocotte
, with diamonds flashing at her throat and her elbows propped on the table of a tavern, pressing her jeweled fingers into her cheeks. And while she was speaking, Erdosain scratched the end of his nose. But since this was an inexplicable attitude, Erdosain remembered that four girls had appeared with dresses down to their knees and yellow hair in wild disorder around their horsy faces. And the four girls, as they passed by him, held out a plate. It was then that Erdosain wondered: "Can they eat on the money they make doing that?" Then the star, the
cocotte,
who wore under her chin a great droopy mass of diamonds, told him yes, that the four girls lived on panhandling, and began talking about a Russian prince, in her most feminine voice, whose way of living, although she tried to arrange things, would not fit in with the way the girls lived. At that point Erdosain was able to understand satisfactorily why he was scratching the end of his nose while the lovely creature was talking.