The Seven Madmen

by Roberto Arlt

  He saw ever more clearly that he was sunk in a concrete hole. It was like nothing on earth! An unseen sun lit the walls forever, a turbulent orange. A lone bird's wing slashed across the sky in the rectangle formed by the walls, but he was marooned forever in those noiseless depths, lit by a turbulent orange sun.

  Then the whole of his life lay in that meager square centimeter of mind. He could even "see" his heartbeat, and had no defense against that horror that pursued him to the depths of the abyss, sometimes black and sometimes orange. If he relaxed in the least, reality would break out and howl in his ears. Erdosain did not want to, he wanted to look—he could not help but look—and there was his wife down inside a blue-carpeted room. And there was the Captain in one corner. Nobody had to tell him they were in a little bedroom, six-sided and almost completely taken up by a wide, low bed. He did not want to look at Elsa... no ... no ... he wanted to, but under pain of death he could not have torn his eyes away from that man undressing in front of her—in front of his lawfully wedded wife who was no longer with him—who was with another man. His fear was overcome by a need for more terror, for more suffering, and suddenly, covering her eyes with her fingers, she ran to the naked man, firm and taut, pressed against him unintimidated by the rosy virility erect against the blue background.

  Erdosain was flattened by his utter and overpowering horror. If they had run him through a sheet-metal press, his life could not have been mashed thinner. Wasn't that how toads were, squashed into cartwheel ruts in the road, pressed into a mushcake of living tissue? He wanted not to look, he wanted not to so much, for he could see clearly how Elsa leaned onto the man's square, hairy chest and he took her chin in his hand to pull her mouth toward his.

  And suddenly Elsa exclaimed, "I, too, my darling ... I, too." Her face was red with desperation, her clothes whipped about the triangle of her milk-white thighs, and gazing in ecstasy on the man's rigid muscle, she showed her nestled curly hair, her erect breasts—ah! why was he watching?

  Elsa... Elsa, his lawfully wedded wife, could not span in her little hand the massive virility she caressed. The man, desire howling in his ears, threw one arm over his eyes, but she leaned over to stab words like burning iron into his ears: "You are a finer creature than my husband! My God, what a splendid creature you are!"

  Had they screwed him down by his head and neck, boring into his deep-pierced soul, implanting that vision of horror, he could not have suffered more. He was in such pain that if it had suddenly stopped, he would have fragmented into shrapnel. How can the soul hold up under such pain? Yet, he wanted to suffer even more. To be quartered like a steer on the butcher's block ... and if they threw his butchered quarters into the garbage, he would go right on suffering. There was not a square centimeter of his body free of this high-pressure torment.

  Every nerve snapped under that tortuous wrenching tension, and a sudden feeling of repose flooded his members.

  He no longer wanted anything. His life ran silently downhill, like a reservoir escaping its ruined dam, and he fell into a lucid, closed-eyed trance state, which did more to alleviate his pain than anesthesia.

  He felt his heart beat strongly. With effort, he got his head off the hot pillow and simply lay there with no other sensation of life than the cool freshness on his neck and the opening and closing of heart valves like a vast eye opening its sleep-heavy lids to peer into nothing but darkness. Nothing but darkness?

  Elsa was so far from his mind that, in his trance state, he felt they had never even met. He doubted her physical existence. Before, he could see her, but now he could barely manage to recognize her. The truth was that she was no longer herself and he was no longer himself. Now his life ran silently downhill, time flowed backward and, a child, he watched a green tree overshadowing a river forever awakening amid its red-veined rocks. He was a flood of living tissue pouring into darkness. How long till he finally bled dry! And all he felt was the opening and closing of heart valves like a vast eye that opened its sleep-heavy lids to peer into darkness. A street lamp down the block sent a silvery offshoot through a crack to splash against the mosquito screen. His mind painfully cleared.

  He was Erdosain. Now he knew who he was. He arched his back with great effort. He spotted a yellow bar of light under the dining-room door. He had forgotten to turn out the light. He should—oh, no! Elsa had left—he owed six hundred pesos and seven cents to the Sugar Company—but no, wait, he doesn't owe anything now, if there's that check ...

  Reality, reality!

  The slanting parallelogram of light from the street lamp turned the screen to silver and reminded him he was just the same as before, as yesterday, as ten years ago.

  He wanted not to see that bar of light, just as when he was little he had not wanted to see the blue light coming in the window, though he knew it was there, though he knew no human force could make that light go away. Yes, just like when his father would tell him he would beat him tomorrow. It wasn't the same now. The light was blue then and this one now was silver, but just as harsh and full of dire truth as the old light. Sweat came to his temples and hairline. Elsa had left, and would she never return to him? What was Barsut going to say?

  A Slap in the Face

  Suddenly someone was at the door. Erdosain knew who it was and jumped up from the bed. Barsut, as usual, tried to knock without making much noise.

  Erdosain shouted in a hoarse voice:

  "Come in; why don't you come in already?"

  Barsut came in with a backward-leaning stride.

  "I'm coming," Remo shouted to him as the visitor came into the dining room.

  And when he came in, Barsut had already taken a seat, cross legged, with his back to the door, as usual, and his eyes on the southwest corner of the room.

  "What are you up to?"

  "How's it going?"

  He put one elbow on the table, then leaned his head on that arm and the light made the white fleshiness of his hand copper-red. Under eyebrows slashing upward to his temples, his green eyes, hard and glassy, seemed to harbor a question.

  And Erdosain saw that face as if amidst a swarm of lights teeming in the air: his sloped forehead receding to pointy ears, his bony beak like a bird of prey, his chin seemingly flattened to withstand violent abuse, and the oversize necktie that flooded forth from his starchy collar.

  In a flat tone, he asked:

  "Where's Elsa?"

  Erdosain managed to get his wits together.

  "She's left."

  "Ah..."

  They fell silent and Erdosain sat contemplating the angle of the gray suit sleeve against the white edge of the table, and the cheek lit with copper-red lamplight to the bony nasal ridge, while the far side of the face remained unilluminated from the hairline to the dimple in the chin, with a special pocket of shadow forming in the bag under the eye. Barsut slowly moved one of his crossed legs.

  "Oh!" Erdosain heard, and he responded, "What?"

  Erdosain had really only heard that "oh," even though it was uttered a few seconds before.

  "Elsa left..."

  Barsut lifted his head, his eyebrows went up to let more light into his eyes, and with his lips slightly open, he whispered:

  "She's gone?"

  Erdosain scowled, eyeing the visitor's shoes in a sidelong glance and secretly waiting behind half-closed lids for Barsut's shocked reaction, he let the bomb fall:

  "Yes ... she ... went ... off ... with ... another man...."

  And winking his left eye like Ergueta, the pharmacist, he bent his head over. Under the bronze ridge of his eyebrows, his eyes were wary.

  Erdosain went on:

  "See? There's the gun. I could have killed them, only I didn't. Man is one weird animal, huh?"

  "You stood there while he took your wife?"

  Erdosain felt the old hatred inside him, heightened by his fresh humiliation, turned into a source of cruel glee and with his voice trembling in his throat, his mouth dry with rancor, he burst out:

  "What's it
to you?"

  A savage slap in the face knocked him off the chair. Later he remembered Barsut's arm swinging toward him and swinging away, kneading his flesh like dough. He covered his face with both hands, he tried to escape that great mass coming at him like some unleashed force of nature. His head thunked against the wall and he fell.

  When he came to, Barsut was kneeling beside him. He noticed his collar was undone and water was dribbling down his face. A ticklish pain ran upward through his nasal bridge and he thought he might sneeze at any moment. His gums were bleeding a little and he could feel the exact shape of his teeth pressing against his swollen lips.

  Erdosain managed to scrape himself up off the floor and into a chair; Barsut was so pale it looked like two flames were coming out of his eyes. From his cheeks to his ears, taut muscles were knotted into two quivering arches. Erdosain felt he was reeling through some endless dream scene, but he understood it when the visitor took hold of his arm, saying:

  "Look, just spit in my face, if you want, only let me say one thing. I have to tell you the whole story. Sit down ... There, that's good." Erdosain had gotten up without thinking. "Listen, do me a favor. You see how things are, I could clobber you to death ... I just let my hand get the better of me—I swear—if you want, I'll get on my knees and beg your pardon. If you want, I'll do it willingly. Look ... ah ... ah ... if people only knew."

  Erdosain spat blood. A band of heat ran across his forehead and inside his skull, emerging again at the nape of his neck. He was bent over so far his chin was resting on the table edge. Barsut, seeing what kind of shape he was in, asked him:

  "Want to wash your face? It'll do you good. Wait a minute, don't you go." And he ran out to the kitchen and came back with a basin of water. "Here, wash up. Do you lots of good. Want me to get you cleaned up here? Look, I'm sorry, I got carried away. But why did you wink like you were making fun of me? Come on, get cleaned up, do it for me."

  Erdosain arose wordlessly and dipped his face in the basin several times. When he was out of breath, he took his face out of the water. Then he sat down and let the water dry off the hair around his face. He was bone tired. If only Elsa could see him now! Then she'd have to feel sorry for him! He closed his eyes. Barsut brought up his chair next to him and said:

  "I have to tell you the whole story. I'd feel like a worm if I didn't. See, I'm cool as a cucumber right now. Look, if you don't believe me, feel my heartbeat. I'm being totally open with you. Okay now, I... I... ratted on you to the Sugar Company ... I was the guy that sent the anonymous letter."

  Erdosain didn't even look up. Him, or somebody else, what difference did it make?

  Barsut looked at him: he waited for him to react somehow, then said:

  "Why don't you say something? Look here, I blew the whistle on you. I wanted to have you in jail and then have Elsa to myself and humiliate her. You can't possibly know how I've spent my nights fantasizing how they'd throw you in jail! There wasn't any place you could get that much money so they'd get you for sure. But, why don't you say something?"

  Erdosain looked up. Barsut was there, yes, it was him, and he really was saying those things. Bulging knots of muscles trembled imperceptibly under the skin from his cheekbones to his ears.

  Barsut looked down, with his knees on his elbows like a man beside his campfire, and insisted slowly:

  "I have to tell you the whole story. Who else is there that I can pour out my heart to? They say, and it's true, that sadness isn't literally in your heart, but still I have to wonder: why go on living? If this is what I'm like, what good is life? See? You have to understand, this is the kind of stuff I've been thinking about a lot lately. Look, I shouldn't even tell you this stuff. How can you be a total bastard to a guy, then turn around and pour out your heart to him, and not feel bad over it? A lot of times, I've wondered: why don't I feel bad about what I do? What good is life if we do really rotten things and don't feel bad? In school what they teach is that a crime will sooner or later make the criminal go mad, so how come in real life you commit a crime and go around not feeling anything?"

  Erdosain kept an eye on Barsut and now the man's image was engraved on the depths of his mind. With all his vital forces, he was making a life mask of Barsut's pale face, so exact that it would last for all time.

  "Look," Barsut went on. "I knew how mad you were at me, that you'd have killed me just like that, and that made me feel good and at the same time bad. The nights I went to bed thinking how to kidnap you! I thought about sending you a letter bomb, or a snake in a cardboard box. Or I'd hire a taxi to run you over. I'd close my eyes and hours would fly by while I'd think about you two. Do you imagine I loved her?" Erdosain later realized that during that whole night's conversation Barsut avoided calling Elsa by name. "No, I never loved her. But what I wanted was to humiliate her, see? Humiliate her for no good reason: to see you dragged down so she'd be on her knees asking me please to bail you out. See? I never loved her. If I turned you in it was only to humiliate her for being so snooty to me. And when you told me how you'd been stealing from the Sugar Company, wild joy burst out inside me. And before you were through telling me about it, I was saying inwardly: okay, now we'll see where that high and mighty attitude gets her."

  Erdosain let the question pop out:

  "But weren't you in love with her?"

  "No, I never loved her. If you only knew what she's put me through! So now I'm supposed to love her, when she never paid me the least attention? Whenever she looked at me it was like spitting in my face. You were married to her, but you never really knew her! You don't know what kind of woman she is! She could just stand there while you died without the least sign of pity. You know? Something I remember. When the Astraldis went broke and you two were out in the cold, if she'd asked me for everything I had, I'd have given it to her. I'd have given her my whole fortune just to hear her tell me 'thank you.' Just that, 'thank you.' Just to hear those words from her I'd have given literally all I had. But when I brought it up she said: 'Remo is man enough to bring home our bacon.' You don't know her, see. She could watch you die without lifting a finger to help. So I thought. My God, the thoughts that go through a man's head! I threw myself down on the bed and fantasized all kinds of stuff ... you had killed someone ... she needed somebody to come to your rescue and came to me, and without ever mentioning my great sacrifices to her, I'd turn everything upside down to get you out of it. What a woman, Remo! I remember she'd be there sewing. I'd have loved to sit by her side, see? just to hold up her sewing for her, and I could tell she wasn't happy with you. I could see it in her face, how tired she always was, the way she smiled."

  Erdosain remembered the words Elsa had spoken an hour ago:

  "It doesn't matter. I'm happy. You see what a surprise you're in for. You're alone ... suddenly, creak ... the door opens ... and it's me ... I've come back to you."

  Barsut went on:

  "And of course, I wondered why she would keep on living with you, with the kind of man you are ..."

  "And I came alone, on foot, through dark streets, seeking you out... but you don't see me, you're all alone, your head..."

  Erdosain felt his thoughts whirling wildly around on top of his brain like a surging maelstrom. The vast whirlpool sucked its spiral down to the ends of his limbs. A whirlpool that touched against his soul, leaving it raw and tender. How much virtue and insight Elsa had shown when she said:

  "I always loved you ... now, too, I love you ... why did you never before speak like tonight? I feel I'll love you all my life... that other man is nothing but a shadow compared to you."

  Erdosain was sure that these words rescued his soul for all time, while Barsut went on venting his envy and rage:

  "And I'd have liked to ask her what it was she saw in you, make her see you for what you were and shove it in her face what a madman you were, what a bastard, a coward... I swear, I'm not saying these things in anger."

  "I believe you," said Erdosain.

  "Like right now, I
look at you and wonder: how does a woman really look at a man? That's something we'll never know. You realize that? To my mind, you were a miserable wretch, a zero in the arithmetic of life. But to her, what were you like? That's what we'll never know. Did you ever figure it out? Tell me frankly: did you ever really truly know what it was your wife saw in you? What did she see in you to make it worth suffering with your oddities and putting up with you like she did?"

  Barsut went on in all seriousness. He demanded an answer to his hoarse questions. Sitting there with him, Erdosain felt he was not a man but only an exact copy of himself, a phantom self with a bony nose and bronze hair created inside his head, since these were the very things he had asked himself at other moments. Yes, most likely it was necessary to kill him to live in peace, and the "idea" blossomed serenely within him.