The Seven Madmen

by Roberto Arlt

  "You, Pierrot, are Erdosain; you, roly-poly, are the Gold Seeker; you, clown, are the Ruffian; and you, black man, are Alfon. So that's settled, now."

  His speech finished, he pulled Barsut's trunk out from against the wall, pulled it up in front of the puppets and sat in front of them. And thus there began a silent dialogue whose questions came from inside him and received their answer inside him when he fixed his gaze upon the figure he was interrogating.

  His thoughts became surprisingly clear. He needed to express his ideas by telegraphic, clattering staccato, as if all of him had to keep the rhythm of the thoughts in time with a mysterious trepidation of enthusiasm.

  He thought:

  "We've got to set up factories for poison gas. To hire a chemist. To think big, not just trucks, cells, great covered structures. Training camp in the mountains, nonsense. Or, no. Yes. No. Also beside Parana River a factory. Cars armor plating chrome steel nickel. Poison gas important. Up in the mountains and in Chaco Forest to spark revolution. Find brothels, kill owners. A killer band in airplane. Everything possible. Each group radio-equipped. Use a code and keep switching the wavelength. Electric current falling water. Swedish turbines. Erdosain's right. Life is so great! Who am I? Production of bubonic bacillus and super strains of typhus. Set up academy comparative studies Russian French Revolution. Movies an important element. Not to be neglected. See filmmaker. Have Erdosain look into that. Filmmaker in the cause of revolutionary propaganda. That's it."

  Now the flood of thoughts eased up. He told himself:

  "How are we to instill in every mind the revolutionary enthusiasm I bear in my own? There's our problem. What lie or truth do we use? How time goes by. And how sad! Because it's true. There's such sadness within me that if they could only see it they'd be amazed. I carry it all on my own shoulders."

  He curled up on the sofa. He was cold. His veins throbbed hard in his temples.

  "Time slips away. Just like that. And they all fall down, like so many sacks of potatoes. Nobody tries to take wing and soar. How can I get these clods to take wing? And yet, life can be so much more. More than they've ever imagined. The soul like an ocean surging inside seventy kilos of flesh. That same flesh yearns to soar away. Everything in us longs to soar up to the clouds, to reach hidden lands up there in the clouds—but, how? There's always that 'how' and I... here I am, suffering over them, loving them as though I'd given birth to them, because I love those men ... I love them all. They were just randomly plunked down on earth, and that's not how things ought to be. And yet I love them. I can feel it now. I love Humankind. I love them all as though slender threads bound them to my heart. Through that thread they suck my blood, my life, and yet, in spite of it all, there's so much life in me I'd gladly have millions more of them, to love them even more and give them my life. Yes, give them my life like a cigarette. Now I understand Christ. How much he must have loved Humankind! And yet I'm ugly. My big wide face is ugly. And still I must be beautiful, the way only gods are. But I have a cauliflower ear and a great bony nose like a punched-up boxer's. But what does that matter? I'm a man and that's enough. And I need to conquer. That's it. And I would not give up a one of my thoughts for the love of the most beautiful woman."

  Suddenly some earlier words flashed into his memory, and the Astrologer said:

  "Why not? ... We can make cannons, just as Erdosain said. It's an easy procedure. Besides, they don't have to last through a thousand volleys. A revolution that dragged on for that long would be a failure."

  The words fall silent inside him. In the darkness a dark pathway opens inside his skull, with exposed beams running across to join the sides, while in a fog of coal dust the blast furnaces, with cooling stations looming like armored men, fill up the space. Clouds of fire flare from the armored slats and the jungle beyond stretches out thick and impenetrable.

  The Astrologer feels he has his own personality back, the one that the strange dislocation of time had taken from him.

  He thinks, he thinks it is possible to make chrome-plated steel and construct cannons from cast-metal tubes. Why not? His thoughts race on to the possible obstacles with flexibility. Then with the money the brothels bring in land could be bought up in different spots in the country at an insignificant cost. There the members of the society would set up reinforced concrete structures to house the artillery, making them look like storehouses for grain.

  He thrilled to the thought of setting up a revolutionary party within the country, one that would rise to arms at a radio-broadcast signal. Why not? Steel, chrome, nickel. The words have taken hold in his head. Steel, chrome, nickel. The head of each cell would be in charge of a battery. So, what will we need? For each cannon to fire four or five hundred rounds. And then machine guns mounted on cars. Why not? For every ten men a machine gun, an auto, a cannon. Why not give it a try?

  Slowly, in the depths of the black night, a huge white-hot egg of steel, supported on two columns, slowly moves its point to a great dome. This is the Bessemer steel process driven by hydraulic piston. A shower of sparks and flames pours from the top of the steel egg. Iron is being made into steel, being subjected to a blast of air that makes contact at hundreds of atmospheres of pressure. Steel, chrome, nickel. What is there to lose? He thinks of a hundred details. Not long ago a voice inside him had wondered:

  "Why is it the sum total of human happiness would occupy so little space?"

  The truth of it saddened his existence. The work should belong to the few. And those few should walk with giant strides.

  It is necessary to create the complication. And to see things plain. First to kill Barsut, then to set up the brothel, the training camp in the mountains ... but, how to dispose of the body? Isn't it idiotic that the man who can easily build a cannon and manufacture steel, chrome, and nickel should have such a hard time figuring out how to get rid of a body? But that's unthinkable ... it could be burned up ... five hundred degrees are enough to destroy a body contained in a closed receptacle. Five hundred degrees."

  Time and exhaustion go streaming through his mind. He would like not to think, and suddenly his voice, as if independent of his mouth and his will, whispers from inside to distract him a little:

  "The revolutionary movement will break out simultaneously in every town in the country. We'll launch an attack on the barracks. We'll start by shooting anybody who gets in our way. A few days beforehand in the capital we'll let loose a few kilograms of a strain of typhus and bubonic plague bacilli. From planes, during the night. Every cell near the capital will cut off railway lines. We'll allow no trains to enter or to leave. Then we'll have the nation's heart paralyzed and black out telegraph communications, too, and with the head men shot, the power is ours. All this is crazy, but quite feasible. And when a person is on the verge of great deeds, he lives in a dreamlike state, like sleepwalking. But still, he makes his way forward with such rapid slowness that once he gets where he's going, it surprises him. To do that, the only indispensable elements are will and money. Besides the cells we can set up a special strike force of murderers and assailants. How many aircraft does the army have? But with the communications all cut off, the barracks under attack, the head honchos shot, who's left to send in the troops after us? This is a country of animals. You have to use a gun. That's indispensable. We'll only get respect with terrorist tactics. That's what a coward mankind is. A machine gun ... How will they get together troops to send in after us? We've cut off telegraph, telephone, railroads.... Ten men can keep a population of ten thousand in fear. To have the machine gun is enough. There are eleven thousand total population. The north country, the great plains, they'll join up when we issue the call. Tucuman, Santiago del Estero, if we play our cards right, are ours for the taking. San Juan's full of crypto-Commies. That just leaves the army. We'll attack the barracks by night. If we get their ammo supply, shoot the guys in charge, and hang the sergeants, with ten men we can take a base with a thousand soldiers, so long as we have machine guns. It's so simple. And hand g
renades, what should I do about hand-carried explosive devices? With the element of surprise, simultaneously nationwide, ten men per town and Argentina is ours. The soldiers are young and will come over to our side. We'll make enlisted men into officers and put together a Red Army like nothing anybody's ever seen on this continent. Why not? What's to stop us from striking at the San Martin Bank, assaulting the Rawson Hospital, and taking the Martelli Agency in Montevideo? All we need is three newspaperboys with guts and the city's ours.

  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 th
e 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: