The Seven Madmen

by Roberto Arlt

  "I thought you were pro-labor."

  "When I talk to a laborer, I'm a socialist. Now I'll tell you something: my organization is based on one started up at the beginning of the ninth century by a Persian bandit named Abdala-Aben-Maimun. Naturally, without the industrial part I have in mind, the part that will make it work. Maimun attempted a coalition of freethinkers, aristocrats, and believers from two races as different as the Persians and the Arabs with a whole elaborate setup of secret initiate rites and mysteries. They lied to people right and left. They promised the Jews the Messiah's arrival, the Christians the Paraclete, the Moslems the Madhi... so a bunch of people with totally dissimilar opinions, social backgrounds, and beliefs were all working for this big scheme but very few knew what the point of it was. That was how Maimun was going to win total control over the Moslem world. I should tell you the movement's leaders were complete cynics, they didn't believe in anything. We'll follow their scheme. We'll be Bolsheviks, Catholics, Fascists, atheists, militarists, depending on where you are in the echelons."

  "You're the most shameless huckster I've ever seen.... It'd be funny if you brought it off."

  Barsut took special joy in insulting the Astrologer. It was mostly because he hated to admit he was outclassed. Besides there was something that really rankled, it sounds odd, but he was furious thinking Erdosain should get to be so close a friend of such a man. And he was fuming: "How come this idiot gets to be friends with a man like that?" And that was the reason he felt so sure that everything the Astrologer said could be proven wrong.

  "We will bring it off, with gold as the lure. The proof our scheme is really working will be there in black ink on the bottom line. Those brothels will rake it in for us. Erdosain has come up with a device to standardize the number of men a woman gets per day. Then also there's input from donations and a new industry we're going to launch: the copper rose, Erdosain's invention. Now maybe you see why we kidnapped you."

  "What good does that do me if I'm still your prisoner?"

  Just then, Erdosain thought how odd it was that Barsut had never once threatened to get back at the Astrologer once he was free, which made him say to himself: "You really have to watch it around that rat, he might blow the whistle on us, not for money, just for spite."

  The Astrologer went on:

  "With your money we could start a brothel, get our little band together and buy the metal and telegraph hookup and other things to process gold with."

  "Have you thought you could be wrong?"

  "Sure ... I've thought that, only I just keep on as if I were dead right. Anyway, a secret organization is like a boiler. It gets up enough steam to run a big crane—"

  "And what do you want to run?"

  "Get some life running in those inert bodies. We happy few want, really, need, the greatest powers on earth. So we're justified in using any means to keep the weak cringing and the strong going strong. And for that, we need to build up our strength, get people's minds turned around, sell them on barbarism. The thing that gives us this mysterious energy, enough to keep the whole thing in motion, is our organization. We'll bring back the Inquisition, burn people at the stake in the square if they won't believe in God. It's necessary, believe me, it's totally necessary for a great, awesome religion to rekindle mankind's heart. To have people falling to their knees as a saint goes by, for the most insignificant priest's prayer to ignite wonders in the evening sky. Ah, if you knew how I've got it thought out! And how I keep going is by seeing how out of whack civilization and the twentieth century have got people. All those crackpots with no place to fit into society are so much waste energy. Go to the tackiest corner café, pick out two numbskulls and a cynic, and I'll show you three geniuses. Those geniuses don't work, don't do anything—I admit that so far they're only geniuses on paper. But there, on paper, is the energy that could be tapped to power a new and dynamic movement. And that's the energy source I want to plug into."

  "Director of Madman Energy—"

  "But that's it exactly. I want to harness the madman power, those numberless crackpot geniuses, the unsettled types who get thrown out of séances and communist party cells.... Those idiots—and I have firsthand experience to talk from—if carefully bamboozled and hyped-up, can carry out schemes that would stand your hair on end. Drugstore poets. Neighborhood inventors, the local prophet, street-corner politicians, and the philosopher down the street, those will be the cannon fodder for our setup."

  Erdosain smiled. Then, not looking at the man in chains, he said:

  "You don't know how when you get to the fringes of genius you find the most boundless insolence—"

  "Right, not unless you understand those fringes, eh, Barsut?"

  "I don't care about any of that rot."

  "Well, you should, since you'll be in this with us. This is how I feel about it. If you tell somebody on that outer fringe that he's no genius, you have all that insolence and raw energy turned against you for not appreciating the guy. But if you carefully praise one of those incredibly conceited weirdos, then this same guy who might have killed you for the smallest put-down is at your beck and call. The secret is in knowing just how many lies to feed them. If there's enough, you can have an inventor or poet for your slave."

  "And you think you're a genius, too?" Barsut burst out angrily.

  "Yeah, I think I'm a genius.... Of course I think so—only for five minutes each day and that's it—after that I don't much care if I'm one or not. Those labels don't mean much if you're the guy who can make people's dreams come true. It's just out on the fringes of genius that empty words are so important. I've been working it out, and not because I'm worried whether I'm a genius or not. Can man be made happy? And so I start by going to those losers, giving them something to focus in on, a lie to make them happy by shoring up their egos ... and those pathetic weirdos, who by themselves would never have gotten anyone to appreciate them, will blossom into valuable resources, will be our power source ... our steam power."

  "You do go on. I asked you one specific question, what you yourself want to get out of setting the whole scheme up."

  "Well, that's a pretty stupid question. What did Einstein go and invent his theory for? The world could get by without Einstein's theory. Do I happen to know if I'm a tool of higher forces, in which I don't even believe? Don't ask me. The world is a mysterious place. Maybe I'm only the servant, the hireling who's setting up a beautiful house where the Saint, the Chosen One, will come to die."

  Barsut smiled imperceptibly. There the man was, talking rot about the Chosen One, with his cauliflower ear, mad shock of hair, and carpenter's smock, and the total impression was one of irony and something un-graspable. How much of it was that weasel faking? And what was funny was that he couldn't be mad at him, something about the guy had taken hold of him, even though he had nothing new to say and just seemed to keep saying the same things and in the same tone of voice he had heard before, sometime long ago, somewhere off in the gray landscape of a dream.

  The Astrologer's tone grew less commanding.

  "Believe me, that's the way it is in times when people feel restless and uprooted. A few people get a feeling like something big is coming. Those who have their nose in the wind, and I'm one of those waiters and watchers, think it's up to them to start stirring society up ... to do something even if it turns out to be nonsense. So, as it turns out, my something is the secret conspiracy. I mean, God! Does any man know in advance how what he does will turn out? When I think how I'm setting a world of puppets in motion ... and how there'll be more and more puppets, I shudder to think, I even wonder if maybe the whole thing is as totally out of my control as some electrician who suddenly runs amok in a factory is to the plant owner. And even so, I have a compulsion to set the works in motion, to harness all that waste energy dissipating away inside a hundred heads, to get it all coordinated together by buttering up people's vanity, ego, longings, dreams, with lies for my basis and gold for reality ... red gold—"

  "You're
on the right track ... you're bound for glory."

  "Yeah, now, what do you want out of me?"

  "Like I said. Sign over a check for seventeen thousand pesos. You'll have three thousand left over. Take it and go to hell, for all we care. The rest we will pay back in monthly installments out of what the brothels and goldworks bring in."

  "And do I get out of here?"

  "Soon as we cash the check."

  "How do I know you're being straight with me?"

  "Some things you just take on faith.... Only if it's proof you want, let me tell you this: if you won't sign the check, I'll have you tortured by the Man Who Saw the Midwife and when you do sign, I'll kill you...."

  Barsut raised his dull, gray eyes, and now his face, three days unshaven, looked out through a coppery mist. Kill him! It had no impact. Right then it meant nothing to him. Life meant so little to him, anyway.... He had long been expecting some disaster; here it was, and instead of the icy fingers of terror, he felt full of a vast, burned-out numbness that didn't much care anymore whatever might happen to him. The Astrologer went on:

  "But I don't want to have to do that .... What I'd like is to ask for your personal help—have you get involved in our projects. Believe me, we're living through terrible times. Anyone who can find the great lie the herd needs will be King of the World. Men live lives of anxiety.... Catholicism doesn't work for anybody anymore.... Buddhism's no good for people like us who believe in satisfying our desires.... Maybe we'll tell them stuff about Lucifer and the Morning and Evening Star. You can supply the poetry we need to get into our dreams, and we'll appeal to the young— Oh! This is going to be very big ... very big indeed...."

  The Astrologer dropped wearily onto a box. He was exhausted. He wiped his sweaty forehead with a worker's checked hankie, and all three sat silently for a moment.

  Suddenly, Barsut said:

  "Yes, you're right, it is big. Let me go and I'll sign your check."

  He had thought that everything the Astrologer told him was a lie, and that had almost proved his undoing.

  The Astrologer got up, still wary.

  "Sorry, I'll let you go after we cash the check. This is Wednesday. Tomorrow at noon you can get the run of the house, but you can't leave the grounds for two months still." He put that part in because he could see the man still didn't believe in his projects. "You won't need anything this afternoon?"

  "No."

  "Okay then, be seeing you."

  "But are you leaving? Stay here—"

  "No, I'm tired. I need some sleep. Tonight I'll come back and we can talk a little more. You want some cigarettes?"

  "Yeah, good."

  They left the stables.

  Barsut lay back on his bed of dry grass and, lighting up, blew some smoke puffs that went swooping in curlicues through a slanting sunbeam, splendid steel blue spirals. Now he was alone, his thoughts got sorted out, and he even told himself:

  "Why not help the guy? His scheme to set up a training camp sounds interesting, and now I can see why that jerk Erdosain thinks so much of him. Maybe I'm coming out of this a loser ... maybe I'm doing myself a favor ... but things end up one way or another." And he half closed his eyes to reflect on the future.

  The Astrologer, with his hat pulled over his eyes, turned to Erdosain and said:

  "Barsut thinks he's got us fooled. Tomorrow, after we cash the check, we'll have to execute him—"

  "You mean you'll have to execute him—"

  "Okay by me ... only what do we do with him? If he gets free he'll turn us in first thing. And he thinks we're crazy! Well, we would be to let him live."

  They stood beside the house. Jagged, chocolate brown clouds scudded quickly across the sky above them.

  "So who'll murder him?"

  "The Man Who Saw the Midwife."

  "You know, it's rough to die with summer just coming in...."

  "Well, that's how it goes ..."

  "And the check?"

  "You cash it."

  "You don't worry I'll cut out on you?"

  "Not for the moment, no."

  "How come?"

  "Because I don't. You're the one who needs the society to get going because you don't know what to do with yourself. That's how come you're in it with me ... not knowing what to do with yourself, being out of whack."

  "Maybe so. What time do we meet tomorrow?"

  "Um ... nine at the station. I bring you the check and say, Do you have the right identification?"

  "Yes."

  "Nothing to worry about, then. Ah! One thing. I suggest you don't say much in the meeting, be cool, even cold."

  "They're all coming?"

  "Yes."

  "The Gold Seeker, too?"

  "Yes."

  Shoving back the twigs that whipped into their faces, they walked out to the summerhouse. It was a round structure with diamond-latticed wood where a honeysuckle twined its green stems and masses of white and purple blossoms.

  The Farce

  The entire round table got to its feet when they came in, but Erdosain stopped short in surprise when he saw one of its members was an army officer in a major's uniform.

  The Gold Seeker, Haffner, some stranger, and the Major were there. The first two sat with their elbows on the table. Haffner was going over some papers and the Gold Seeker was studying a map. A stone paperweight held down the map. The Ruffian shook hands with Erdosain and they sat together, Erdosain eyeing the Major, terribly curious as to what he was doing there. Really the Astrologer was a master of surprise moves.

  Still, the stranger didn't much appeal to him.

  He was quite a tall fellow, pale, with eyes black as coal. There was something repellent about him, and it was his lower lip, curled in a perpetual sneer, together with his long hook nose with three furrows right at the bridge. A silky mustache brushed his rosy lips and he scarcely deigned to look at Erdosain, and as soon as they were introduced he flopped into a hammock, where he lay back against the headrest, with his sword between his legs and one lock of hair clinging to his flat forehead.

  And for a few minutes they all sat there silently, eyeing one another uneasily. The Astrologer, sitting by the summerhouse entrance, lit a cigarette without taking his eyes off the "heads." That was what they were called at a later meeting. Suddenly, he looked right at the other five men around the table and said:

  "I see no point in us going over what we all know and have agreed on in private..., that is, to start a secret organization funded by business schemes, moral or immoral. We're all set on that, right? How do you men feel (I have a fondness for geometry) about the term 'cells' for the subunits of our setup?"

  "That's what they call them in Russia," said the Major. "People in one cell never meet the members of another."

  "What—won't the heads know each other?"

  "No, no, the people who never meet are the rank and file, not the heads."

  The Gold Seeker cut in:

  "That way nothing will get done. What ties the members of different cells together?"

  "But we six are the real organization."

  "No, sir ... I am the real organization," objected the Astrologer. "But, seriously, we're all the organization ... except for certain areas because of my position."

  The Major cut in:

  "I think this is a moot point, since, from what I've been given to understand, there'll be a standardized hierarchy. At each promotion, the cell member will come under a new head. There'll be as many promotions possible as there are heads of cells."

  "So how many cells are there right now?"

  "Four. I'll be in charge of everything," the Astrologer went on. "You, Erdosain, Head of Industry; the Gold Seeker"—a young man at the corner of the table nodded—"you'll run Training Camps and Mines; the Major will work on infiltrating the army, and Haffner will be Head of Brothels."

  Haffner got up and burst out:

  "Just a minute, I'll be head of nothing. For me, this is just another business deal. All I'm doing for yo
u is setting up a cost analysis, and that's it, period. If my being here bothers you, I'll go."

  "No, stay," the Astrologer urged him.

  The Melancholy Ruffian sat down again and went back to scribbling on his papers. Erdosain admired his open rudeness.

  But, beyond a doubt, the focus of attention and curiosity was the Major; his uniform was so impressive and his being there so very odd.

  The Gold Seeker turned to him:

  "How's that? You think you can infiltrate our setup into the army?"

  Everyone sat bolt upright in his chair. That was the big surprise of the meeting, the thing the Astrologer had been waiting to spring on them. Undeniably, the man was a born leader. The bad part of it was that he always played his cards so close to his chest. But Erdosain felt flattered to be in on things with him. Now they were all sitting up in their seats to listen to the Major. The Major looked carefully at the Astrologer, then said:

  "Gentlemen, I speak to you of weighty matters. If they were not grave, I would never have come among you. Here is what is happening: our army is seething with dissatisfied officers. No point in my giving you the whole how and why of it, which wouldn't interest you, anyway. The notion of 'absolute rule' and recent military actions, I refer to Chile and Spain, have got many of my fellow officers wondering if this country might not be ripe for dictatorship, too."

  They sat gaping in astonishment. This was a real surprise.

  The Gold Seeker replied:

  "But do you think the Argentine army... I mean ... the officer corps, will accept our ideas?"

  "They most certainly will... so long as you can show them an organized program. I can tell you right now there are more officers than you think fed up with democratic theories, including legislative representation. Don't interrupt, sir. Ninety percent of this country's elected officials are less educated than a first lieutenant in our army. A politician accused of having a hand in a governor's murder put it very aptly: 'Running the country is no big deal—no trickier than running a big ranch.' He hit it on the head, as far as this continent's concerned."

  The Astrologer wrung his hands in visible delight.