The Seven Madmen

by Roberto Arlt

  "Yes."

  "Will you give me your hand?"

  The stranger straightened up and reached out her hand with great dignity. Erdosain took it carefully in his hands and kissed it, and she looked at him at length, the coldness of her eyes melted into a sudden warmth that flushed her cheeks. Then Erdosain remembered that man in chains, and not letting it blot out the pale happiness now in him, he said:

  "Look ... if you were to ask me to kill myself now, I would do it. That's how happy I am."

  The heat that had a moment ago convulsed him with weeping was again dissipated into a cold gaze. The woman looked at him with curiosity.

  "But in all seriousness. Look... it's better, even ... ask me to kill myself—tell me, doesn't it seem to you it would be better if certain people just went away?"

  "No."

  "Even if they do the worst actions?"

  "That should be in God's hands."

  "Then no point in us trying to discuss it."

  Again they drank maté in silence, a silence that came about so he could drink in the sight of the red-haired woman, wrapped in her fur coat, with her transparent hands clasping her knee over the green silk dress.

  And all at once, unable to hold back his curiosity, he exclaimed:

  "Is it true you were a servant?"

  "Yes ... what's so strange about that?"

  "But how odd!"

  "Why?"

  "It is odd, though. Sometimes I feel as if I'll find in someone else's life what's missing from my own. And then you think how there are these people who have found the secret of happiness ... and if they would tell us their secret we would be happy, too."

  "But, my life is no big secret."

  "But you never felt the strangeness of living?"

  "Oh, yes, I've felt it."

  "Tell me about it."

  "It was when I was a little girl. I worked in a beautiful house on Avenida Alvear. There were three girls and four servants. I'd wake up in the morning and it was so hard to believe that I was there living around all this furniture that didn't belong to me and those people who only talked to me so that I'd wait on them. And sometimes it seemed to me that the others all had a niche in life, and fit into their houses, while I felt like I was loose, just barely tied with a cord to life. And their voices would come floating out to me like when you're asleep and can't tell if you're dreaming or you're awake."

  "It must be sad."

  "Yes, it's very sad to see other people be happy and see how other people can't see how you're unhappy for all your life. I remember how at siesta time I would go to my room and instead of doing my mending I'd think: will I be a servant all my life? And the work wasn't what tired me anymore, it was my thoughts. Haven't you noticed how stubborn sad thoughts are?"

  "Yes, they never go away. How old were you then?"

  "Sixteen."

  "And you'd still never been to bed with a man?"

  "No ... but I was furious—furious at being a servant all my life—besides, one thing happened that really made an impression on me. It was one of the sons. He was engaged and very Catholic. More than once I came on him loving up a cousin who was his fiancée, I remember now, she was a very sensual girl, and I wondered how you could reconcile Catholicism with such nasty stuff. Involuntarily, I got so I was spying on them ... but even though he was so eager-handed with his fiancée, he was always correct with me. Later I realized I had wanted him ... but it was too late ... I was working in a different house...."

  "And then ..."

  "I could feel my ideas weighing in on me. What did I want from life? Didn't I know, then? Everywhere they were good to me. Since then I've heard people say harsh things about the rich—but I couldn't see it. Think how they lived. So, why should they have to be bad, right? They were the girls of the family, I was the servant."

  "And?"

  "I remember one day I was on a streetcar with one of my employers. Two young men were having a conversation in one row. How you ever noticed how some days certain words go off like bombs in your ears—as if you'd always been deaf and were hearing people speak for the first time? Anyway. One of these two men was saying 'An intelligent woman, even an ugly one, if she set about selling her favors right would get rich, and if she'd just keep out of love she'd be queen of the city. If I had a sister that's what advice I'd give her.' Those words left me frozen where I sat. That was the instant end of my timidity and when we got to the end of the line it seemed like instead of those strangers having said those words, I had, I who had not even known about them up till then. And for days I puzzled over how one sells her favors."

  Erdosain smiled:

  "Amazing."

  "I spent my next month's pay on a lot of books about prostitution. That was dumb, because they were nearly all pornography—stupid—not even about prostitution, but really about prostituting one's soul running after pleasure. And, can you believe it, not one of my friends could give me an explanation in so many words of prostitution."

  "Go on ... I'm not surprised now Ergueta should fall in love with you. You're an admirable woman."

  Hipólita smiled, blushing.

  "Don't exaggerate ... all I am is a sensible one."

  "So then, you delicious creature?"

  "Silly kid! ... Anyway—" Hipólita pulled her coat together over her chest and went on: "I went on with my work, all day long, but the work got to seem strange— I mean, while I'd be scrubbing or making a bed, my mind would be off far away and yet so much inside me sometimes I thought if it grew any bigger it would split open my skin. But I couldn't get it figured out. I wrote a bookstore asking if they didn't have a manual for women starting to sell themselves and they didn't answer, till one day I decided to see a lawyer and have him set me straight on the matter. So I went down street after street where the lawyers hung out their signs, sign after sign until, making my way down Calle Juncal, I stopped in front of a splendid house, talked to the doorman, and he ushered me in to see a doctor of jurisprudence. I remember as if it were today. He was a thin, serious man with a face like a perverted bandit, but when he smiled his soul was like some young kid's. When I thought it over later I concluded that he must have been a man who suffered a lot."

  She sipped the maté, then, handing it back to him, she said:

  "How hot it is here! Could you open the window?"

  Erdosain opened one side a crack. It was still raining. Hipólita went on:

  "So, not making it a big thing I said, 'Professor, I'm here to see you because I want to know how a woman sells her favors.' He just sat there staring at me in amazement. After a few moments' thought, he said, 'What's your purpose in wanting to know?' And I calmly explained to him my plans and he listened to me attentively, frowning, weighing my words. Finally he said, 'A woman is said to be selling her favors when she carries out sexual acts without love and for profit.' So you mean, I said then, that by selling her body, she can get free of it... and then she's free."

  "You said that to him?"

  "Yes."

  "How strange!"

  "How do you mean?"

  "And then?"

  "Hardly saying good-bye, I went out. I was happy, I've never been happier than that day. To sell one's body. Erdosain, that was it, to get free of your body, to have your will free to do anything that popped into your head. I felt so happy that as soon as a nice-looking fellow came along and murmured sweet things to me under his breath, I gave myself to him."

  "And then?"

  "A real surprise! Because when the man—I told you he was nice-looking—well he fell over like an ox when he was satisfied. The first thing I thought was he must be sick—I never imagined that. But when he explained to me that that was natural for any man, I couldn't help but laugh. So that a man who seems as immensely strong as a bull... well, have you ever seen a thief in a room full of gold? Just then I, the servant girl, was that thief in a room full of gold. And I saw the world lay in my hand ... Later, after I got into prostitution, I resolved to study—yes, don'
t look so astonished, I read all kinds of things—I came to the conclusion from reading novels that men are ready to see an educated woman as having a great capacity for love ... I don't know if I'm making it clear ... I mean that a veneer of education could cover over the merchandise and raise the value."

  "Did you take pleasure in the moment of possession?"

  "No ... but back to what I was saying: I read all kinds of things."

  Erdosain warmed to the woman's cynicism, and, feeling tender toward her, he asked:

  "Will you give me your hand?"

  She gave it to him gravely.

  Erdosain took it carefully; then he kissed it and she looked at him at length; but Remo suddenly remembered that man in chains; now he would be awake in the stables, and not letting it chill the sweet warmth lulling his senses, he said:

  "Look if you ... if you asked me to kill myself now, I'd do it gladly."

  She looked at him at length through her red eyelashes.

  "I say that seriously. Tomorrow ... today ... it's better ... ask me to kill myself ... tell me, doesn't it seem to you certain people should just disappear from earth?"

  "No, that's no way to do things."

  "Even though they might turn out criminals?"

  "Who's to judge someone else?"

  "Then no point us talking about it."

  Again they sipped the maté in silence. Erdosain understood the sweetness of many things. He looked at her, then he said:

  "What a strange creature you are!"

  She smiled, pleased, and rejoicing broke out inside his soul.

  "Shall I put in more leaves?"

  "Yes."

  Suddenly Hipólita looked at him seriously.

  "Where did you get that soul you have?"

  Erdosain was about to speak about his sufferings, but he felt inhibited and said instead:

  "I don't know ... I've often thought about purity— I would have liked to be a pure man," and, waxing enthusiastic, he went on, "Often I've felt sad over not being a pure man. Why? I don't know. But can you imagine a man with a white soul, in love for the first time ... and everyone like that? Can you imagine how great love would be between a pure woman and a pure man? Then before they gave themselves to one another, they'd kill themselves—or wait, no; she'd be the one to offer herself to him for one day—then they'd kill themselves, realizing the uselessness of living with no illusions."

  "But still, that's not possible."

  "But it exists. Haven't you ever noticed how many shopkeepers and dressmakers kill themselves together? They love one another ... they can't marry ... they go to a hotel... she gives herself to him, and then they kill themselves afterward."

  "Yes, but they don't do it with any plan in mind."

  "Maybe not."

  "Where did you have supper last night?"

  Erdosain spoke about the Espilas, explaining to her how those people had fallen into penury.

  "And why don't they work?"

  "Where do they get work? They look for it and don't find it. That's the terrible part. It even seemed I was seeing how misery had killed off their desire to live. Deaf Eustaquio is good at math—he knows infinitesimal calculus—but it doesn't do him any good. He also knows Don Quixote by heart... but something's a bit skewed in his reasoning.... Here, I'll show how: when he was sixteen they sent him out to buy leaves for maté and he went to a drugstore instead of a grocery. After a lot of explanations, he said that maté leaves were a medicinal product—that that was what botany taught."

  "He has no common sense."

  "Exactly. Besides, he's a fool for gambles—to solve a riddle he'll miss a meal, and when he has a few centavos he goes to a sweet shop and eats himself silly."

  "How odd!"

  "But Emilio, he's a good sort. He says—as he's told me, he's sure the psychic state they're in, strange and weak-willed, is a hereditary affliction, and so that's how he runs his life, he's as slow as a tortoise. He can take two hours to get dressed. It's as though he did everything in an atmosphere of extraordinary indecision."

  "And the sisters?"

  "The poor girls do what they can ... they sew ... one looks after a friend's hydroencephalitic child with his head bigger than a pumpkin."

  "How dreadful!"

  "What I can't understand is how they can get used to all that. That's why after I visited them, I felt I had to give them hope—and since I know how to talk to people, I managed to. And they dedicated themselves to the copper rose."

  "What's that?"

  Erdosain explained to her about his life as an inventor. It was at the first, right after he married, that he dreamed of getting rich through a discovery. His imagination filled up the nights with extraordinary machines, incomplete pieces of mechanisms that spun their lubricated gears.

  "So then you are an inventor?"

  "No ... now I'm not. That did seem important to me then. There was a time when I was hungry—terribly hungry for money—perhaps I was infected with an insanity time has changed.... So when I talked to them about it, it wasn't because I was interested in the matter economically, but just to see them full of hope, I had to see with my own eyes those poor girls dreaming about silk dresses, a nice-looking boyfriend, and a car in front of a townhouse they would never have, and now I'm sure they believe in all that."

  "Were you always like that?"

  "Only some of the time. Has that never happened to you, to get this urge to do charitable deeds? Now I remember this other thing. I'll tell it to you because you were just now asking what kind of soul I had. I remember. A year ago. It was a Saturday and two in the morning. I remember I was sad and I went into a brothel. The lobby was full of people waiting their turn. Suddenly the door opened and the woman stood there—imagine—a little round sixteen-year-old's face ... blue eyes and a schoolgirl smile. She was wearing a green wrap and was quite tall... but she had a schoolgirl face .. She looked around her ... it was too late; a dreadful black with lips like inner tubes had gotten up and then, after having wrapped us all in a promise, went sadly back to the bedroom, under the hard gaze of the madam."

  Erdosain stopped for a moment, then, in a purer and slower voice, he went on:

  "Believe me ... it's a shameful thing to wait in a brothel. You never feel sadder than there with all those pale faces around you trying with false, shifty smiles to hide the terrible urgency of the flesh. And there's something humiliating besides ... I don't know what... but time goes rushing through your ears, while your sharpened hearing listens to the bedsprings groan inside, then silence, then the sound of washing up—but before anyone could take the black man's place, I got up and took that seat. I sat waiting with my heart banging in great thumps, and when she appeared in the doorway I got up."

  "That's how it always is—one after another."

  "I got up and went in, the door closed again; I left the money on the washbasin, and when she was about to open her wrapper, I took her arm and said, 'No, I'm not in here to sleep with you.' "

  Now Erdosain's voice had grown fluid and vibrant. "She looked at me and surely the first thing she thought was that I must be some pervert; but looking at her seriously, believe me, I was moved, and I said to her: 'Look, I came in because I felt sorry for you.' Now we were sitting together on a bureau with a gilded mirror, and she, with her schoolgirl face, was looking me over gravely. I remember! I can still see it. I said, 'Yes, I felt sorry for you. I know you must earn two or three thousand pesos a month ... and there are families who would be content to live on what you throw away on shoes ... I know ... but I felt sorry for you, terrifically sorry, seeing so much beauty so shabbily insulted.' She looked at me in silence, but I didn't smell of alcohol. Then I thought—right then it occurred to me as the black man was going in, to leave you with a sweet memory ... and the sweetest memory I could come up with was this—to come in and not touch you ... and then forever afterward you'd remember that gesture.' And see, while I'd been talking the prostitute's wrapper had come open over her breasts, and whil
e above her crossed legs you could ... suddenly she caught sight of that in the mirror and quickly pulled her robe down over her knees and covered up her chest. That gesture made a strange impression on me ... she looked at me without saying a word—who knows what she was thinking—suddenly the madam rapped with her knuckles on the door and she looked at me with a pained expression, then her little face turned toward me ... she looked at me a moment and got up ... she took the five pesos and forced them into my pocket as she said, 'Don't come back, if you do I'll have the bouncer kick you out.' We were standing up ... I was headed out the other door, but suddenly, not taking her eyes from mine, she wrapped her arms around my neck ... she was still looking into my eyes and kissed me on the mouth ... I can't tell you what that kiss was like ... she ran her hand across my forehead and said: 'Good-bye, noble man.' "

  "And you never went back?"

  "No, but I hope we'll meet again someday ... who knows where, but she, Lucién, will never forget me. Time will go by, she'll go through the most miserable brothels ... she'll grow horrible, but I'll always remain in her as what I set out to be, as the most precious memory in her life."

  The rain beat on the windows of the room and the mosaics of the tiled patio. Erdosain sipped his maté slowly.

  Hipólita got up, went over to the windowpanes and peered for a moment into the blackness of the patio. Then she turned around and said:

  "Do you know, you're a strange man?"

  Erdosain hesitated for an instant.

  "I'll tell you the truth—I don't know what's to become of my life—but believe me, I wasn't given the chance to be a good man. Dark outside forces twisted me, pulled me down."

  "And now?"

  "Now I'm going to do an experiment. I met an admirable man whose firm conviction it is that lying is the basis of human happiness and I'm going along with him in everything he does."

  "And does that make you happy?"

  "No ... some time ago I figured out that I was never going to be happy again."

  "But do you believe in love?"

  "Why talk about it!" But suddenly he realized why he had been rambling on like that a few minutes ago, and he said: "What would you think of me if tomorrow ... I mean any day ... if any day now you found out I had killed a man?"