“Male,” he deduced right away. “Not too old. Stingy? Got things on his mind.”
Then, with his solemn right hand aimed at the Christ with the Broken Hand, he declaimed:
– Aaalms for the blind! Aaalms for a man who sees not the light of day!
The man was right in front of him. Polyphemus waited, giving his throat a rest. The coin didn’t drop. The footsteps were moving on.
– Strange, grumbled Polyphemus. Is this a punishment?
Don José Victorio Lombardi, of the firm Lombardi Brothers’ Sawmill, hadn’t seen the cyclops with the guitar (an oversight in itself offensive to an artist), and if he heard Polyphemus’s voice, it came to him as mere background noise. Truth be told, Don José Victorio Lombardi wasn’t lacking in aesthetic appreciation (witness his stentorian “Bravos!” at the Colón Theatre,4 in praise of the tenor who could sustain a trill for a full twenty-eight seconds, clocked on a stopwatch). No, Polyphemus didn’t know it, but the attention of that paragon among sawyers was totally absorbed by a serious theological problem perilously intensifying with every step that took him closer to the San Bernardo Church. Had he been gifted with sight, Polyphemus would have been able to admire the hemisphere of Lombardi’s full belly (full of something better than tear-soaked bread!), a gold chain tracing an equator across its complacent girth. But what’s more, he would have observed Lombardi’s steps getting shorter, and his perplexed eyes darting to the Christ with the Broken Hand. So, then! When he passed before the church, would Lombardi take off his hat or would he not? That is the question!5 Polyphemus, were he somehow apprised of Lombardi’s dilemma, would have been quite wrong to attribute Lombardi’s vacillation to unbelief, rebelliousness, or any other theological emotion. True, Lombardi had drifted far from the marvellous faith that had nourished him in childhood, but he could never quite get over the fear that someone Up There might be watching and judging. But this craven need to doff his hat was countered by the fear of ridicule: the hostile glances and mocking laughter that a gesture so unusual in this neighbourhood might provoke from the men and women on the street. Would he take his hat off or not? Lombardi slowed down, Lombardi stopped. But just then, the One-Armed Worker and the Blind Stoker surged up from memory to stare at him accusingly. For sure, that severed arm and those dead eyes were going to be weighed in some hidden balance. Lombardi came to a decision, Lombardi resumed walking. As he passed in front of the San Bernardo Church, he tipped his elegant wide-brimmed hat in a greeting to the Christ with the Broken Hand. But, oh dear, at that very instant he thought he heard a chorus of laughter coming from the seamstresses’ shop. Holding his hat between index finger and thumb, Lombardi pretended he was scratching the back of head with his middle and ring fingers, as if this had been his intention all along. Then, visibly relieved, he hurried off. Don José Victorio Lombardi, that paragon of sawyers, had managed to satisfy both God and the Devil.
Adam Buenosayres glanced at Old Lady Chacharola one last time before crossing Hidalgo Street, feeling a warm glow inside. His intervention in the witch’s battle was his first contact with humanity that day. Not surprisingly, the easy strings of his soul were already quivering with tenderness at the mere thought of several altruistic projects that would surely exert a magical influence on the street. What exemplary acts, what Franciscan gestures would he bring to bear against the thoughtless cruelty of Monte Egmont Street?
“Kiss the rheumy eyelids of old women. Wash the postman’s sore feet. Wipe away the horses’ sweat. Sweep the patios of widows. Cure the blindness of Polyphemus. Talk with the pigeons of San Bernardo. Anoint the beards of the Jews who sell sunflower seeds in front of the Café Izmir. Or assemble all the hoodlums on the street and read them my Blue-Bound Notebook, out loud, from beginning to end.”
Looking critically at this latest wave of spiritual schmaltz, Adam understood it was linked to his anticipation of transcendental events in Saavedra. Yes, in this hour of earthly happiness, he felt the need to share his pleasure and take into his heart the immense sheaf of the world’s creatures. “Unless Solveig Amundsen, by the sheer grace of her name . . .”
– Watch out for the funeral!
Adam was about to cross Warnes Street, but had to step back smartly. Hurrah! The cortège was advancing amid the flutter of sombre plumed helmets and the solemn clatter of iron-shod hooves. Six black horses, glistening all over with sweat, foaming at the muzzle, their proud necks arched forward as they pulled the funeral coach, were guided by white reins in the hands of two rigid charioteers gazing westward. Hurrah! Behind them came the carriage, loaded down with flowers, palm branches, crowns, and purple ribbons. Then the family members in landaus with shrouded lamps, and another twenty vehicles in single file, their lacquered surfaces shimmering. Hurrah, hurrah! Long live the dead man!
Standing at the corner of Monte Egmont and Warnes, Adam read two shiny gold letters embossed on the curtains of the carriage: R.F.
– Ramón Fernández, Rosa Fuentes, Raúl Fantucci, Rita Fieramosca, René Forain, Roberto Froebel, or Remigio Farman. Or whoever the devil it is! Should I take off my hat?
He looked around and saw the men on the street doffing theirs in deference.
– They’re all doing it. Why? An instinctive hatred of death, but a reverential hatred. Maybe they imagine the Grim Reaper is perched up there beside the coachmen, invisible, jealously spying on them, keeping tabs on their gestures of obeisance. “Let Death not notice our resentment! Let Death forget us a while longer!” That’s why they raise their hats. Anyway, it’s only a body minus its soul, a tool with no craftsman, a ship with no pilot. To hell with matter without form! I’m not taking off my hat.
But something was amiss in his proud reasoning, and Adam caught it right away.
– Still, an immortal soul lived in that already decomposing body. A soul exercised its terrible freedom in that body, performed a thousand gestures, worthy or abominable, prudent or crazy, ridiculous or sublime. One day R.F., whoever he was, will have to look for his deserted body in La Chacarita Cemetery, hear the angel’s trumpet, and feel the last leaf of time fall upon his shoulders. Quia tempus non erit amplius.6 Okay, I’ll take off my hat!
Adam saluted the now distant R.F. and waited for all the vehicles to file by. He looked up: the sky was bright, but in his mind’s eye he saw it crumple up and fall in shreds like an old backdrop for a theatrical show.
– “And the sky shall be rolled up like a scroll.” The tremendous words of the Apocalypse, read at midnight. A sacred terror that beats its drums in the distance, in crescendo, in crescendo, until it breaks the eardrums of the soul. A fish on a hook: me. A fish that’s taken the invisible hook and thrashes around at midnight. And that old call, amid the cruel laughter of demons lurking in dark corners: “Adam! Adam Buenosayres!”
Strident voices startled him suddenly.
– Truco! sang out the Ancient Coachman.
– Retruco! shouted the Fat Coachman.
– I’ll go four!
– I’m in!
In front of La Nuova Stella de Posilipo were parked two funeral coaches, rather the worse for wear. The sorry old nags that drew them had their muzzles plunged into canvas feedbags and crunched away on their corn. Inside the cantina, under the enigmatic gaze of Don Nicola, the three funeral coachmen threw down their cards and once again raised their glasses, amid the harrassment of blind-drunk flies.
“Feckless charioteers of Death!” grumbled Adam to himself. “Threadbare top hats, death-green livery, buttons made of a metal without glory. A bunch of Charons with patches on the ass of their pants! They grouse when they count their tips and gargle with cherry liqueur to get the carbolic taste of death out of their mouths. And what about the phantasmagorical Don Nicola? A specimen of dubious ontology: animal, vegetable, or mineral? His famous plonk, one-hundred-percent pure grape juice! Ah, finally, the last car has gone by.”
At La Hormiga de Oro, Ruth took her hands out of a large earthenware tub full of dirty water, where two plate
s and a serving dish were still waiting to be washed. The kitchen was an appalling chaos of utensils: here a ribald pot showed its blackened arse, there a dipper and a skimmer lay fiercely crossed like two swords. On the grill sat a skillet whose layered remains mutely chronicled the fries of yore. The stench of fish fried in rancid oil saturated everything. A greedy swarm of flies buzzed in the garbage can and around the greasy splotches on the oilcloth covering the table. A bearded leek, three bright chili peppers, and a few earthy potatoes, all in a rush basket, lent some dignity to the barbarous scene with the rigour of their classical forms and colours. But Ruth (it must be said in all fairness) was not resting at anchor in all that terrestrial vulgarity. Her mind navigated in a very different world, as she wiped her hands (hands meant for caressing the ethereal torsos of sylphs!) and lowered her brow under the weight of heaven knows what profound cogitations. Suddenly, tossing back her mane of bronze hair, Ruth stood up tall (O slender stalk of narcissus!), placed her right foot forward, stretched out her bare arm toward the cookware, and declaimed:
Melpomene, the tragic muse, approaches!7
She stopped with a frown of displeasure. Not like that! But how? It was supposed to be the moment of terror when the poet discovers the tragic muse, and she goes and says it in that vulgar, marketplace tone, with no expression, like she was asking the butcher for a thirty-cent soup bone! Resuming her pose, she cleared her throat, then moaned lugubriously:
Melpomene, the tragic muse, approaches!
No, no, no! A calf getting its throat cut! If she didn’t watch out, she was going to look ridiculous. Let’s try once more, not so aggressive this time. Stretching out her admirable arm, Ruth spoke:
Melpomene, the tragic muse, approaches!
That’s it! Just right! The same voice, the same élan as Singerman.8 Encore, encore! Dazzled by imaginary glory, Ruth saw herself on the proscenium, bathed in multicoloured lights that brought out the gold and silver highlights in her dress. The applause was thunderous, and she inclined a head freighted with laurels. She straightened up, clasped her hands in front of her, and walked slowly backward, bowing deeply before the row of pots and pans. Just then, the shadow of a bitter old crone darkened the kitchen door.
– How nice! she scolded. The kitchen’s a pigsty, and the lady’s doing a little song and dance!
Ruth’s arms dropped in a gesture of annoyance.
– But Mom! she objected. I’ve only got a couple of dumb plates left to go!
The shadow disappeared, muttering, and Ruth cast a despondent look around her. Misunderstood! All alone! Two little tears (two drops of morning dew!) sparkled in Ruth’s eyelashes. As she bravely plunged her poor hands into the dirty washwater, she looked around in dejection at the frying pan, the dipper, the hostile plates, the blackened pot, the whole jumble of vulgar kitchen utensils that had to be washed twice a day without fail. How sad! Why couldn’t people just eat carnation petals and Coty perfume, or pink pills and blue lozenges. Poor, lonely, misunderstood Ruth! Yes, a drudge. But they better not try to push her around! Just watch it! Because she too had a right to the good life, and one of these days she was gonna throw caution to the winds, and boy oh boy! Then they’d see what she was capable of! Pained, she looked down at her hands in the tub – coarse as sandpaper; the skin cream was useless; would honey-almond lotion work? Just then the jazz started wailing again in the backroom of La Hormiga de Oro. In spite of her woes, Ruth let slip a deep chuckle:
“Barbarians!” she exclaimed to herself. “They’re so out of tune!”
Adam Buenosayres had crossed the boulevard of death and was now entering the dangerous zone of the street. He cast his gaze along the first stretch: not a soul on the sidewalk! The bells of San Bernardo began to ring slowly, once, twice. Still early, lots of time. His eyes snuck through open windows and spied on the naked and rhythmic hearts of the houses: shadowy interiors, where tranquil women laughed; sunlit patios, vibrant with girls and games. Then his eyes went up to the sky as pure as a violet. The clang of bronze had released a scatter of pigeons, and now the belltower was gathering them back like fragments of a shattered peace being restored to wholeness. He looked along the sidewalk lined with paradise trees; they no longer reminded him of Irma’s arboraceous body, because their golden leaves were coming loose, gliding through the air, raining down silently like little bits of death.
“Dry leaf, golden leaf. The alchemy of trees: chrysopæia.9 R.F. trotting down Warnes Street is a dry leaf. Leaf of gold? Who knows! Tricky business, the chrysopæia of a man. Leaves fall downward; human beings fall westward, at least in Buenos Aires. That’s why R.F. is heading west: he’s setting like the sun. Should I make a note of the image? Nah, it’s dopey.”
The lugubrious ideas inspired by R.F. were doing their best to transmute into the stuff of art, but Adam growled his dissatisfaction.
“Hail, Autumn, father of cornball poetry! Show me a dry leaf, and I’ll automatically spit out a cliché for you. The sickness or privilege of seeing everything as a figure or a translation, ever since my childhood, back in Maipú. Trees, for me, were green flames full of sizzling birds. Time was an invisible stream, and its water plied the wheels inside the clocks in the house. ‘And love more joyous than a child’s funeral.’ A bit thick, I’ll admit. But even so, Solveig shouldn’t have laughed with the other girls, and she wouldn’t have if that imbecile Lucio . . . Whoops, it’s Fat Gaia!”
She stood at the corner of Muñecas Street by the big wrought-iron gate, a small child in her arms. Planted on two solid hams ending in feet sheathed in shoes the size of ships, her belly big and round, breasts torrential, body hair luxuriant: the whole of her was spherical but as stable as a cube. Beside her, an old man sat motionless on a straw chair, clutching a clay pipe, slowly drying out like a fig in the sunshine. When Adam came face to face with them, he looked away, then heard Gaia belch prodigiously. Without stopping, he looked into the woman’s eyes, but detected no vulgarity or offensive intent. Her eyes seemed not even to look; they were dilated, watery, absent.
“She’s absorbed in the mysteries of her internal laboratory – a brew of quicklime and sugars, fermentation of chaotic substances, distillation of juices. Gas erupts from her at both ends, it’s natural. Rivers of milk and honey flowing toward her terrible nipples. Gaia! Heavy with seed, weighed down with fruit, yet still working on new structures, weaving flesh and assembling skeletons!”
The child was sleeping, the old man disintegrating.
“Darkness is our before and our after. The child is near his ‘before’; maybe he’s dreaming of how things once were and he’ll cry over his loss as soon as he wakes up. The old man is close to his ‘after’; perhaps he already glimpses the dim colours of the frontier. I like old people, and this isn’t sentimental diarrhea, as that Hun Samuel Tesler would say. I like old people the way I like withered flowers, over-ripe fruit, autumn and twilight, things on their way out and on the eve of metamorphosis. But . . .”
Adam pulled up short, startled: “The blind man!”
The voice of alarm came from within.
“Have an eye for the blind man!” he repeated, then resumed walking with extreme caution.
He was coming close to the turf of a certain bandit known as Polyphemus of the Sharp Ears, whose fearsome job in life was to lighten the purse of passers-by using a technique as simple and ancient as humanity – the sentimental knife-thrust. According to local mythology, Polyphemus, the sacker of souls, suffered total blindness as a result of certain excesses indulged in by his forefathers. Be that as it may, Heaven help the hapless wayfarer who, scorning Polyphemus’s lightless eyes, dreams that he can escape his vigil! For although Polyphemus had indeed been denied all the beauty and grace of the visible world, his ears ruled over the eight directions of the audible universe. The wind itself, though it were shod in the gossamer slippers of the breeze, could not pass next to the cyclops unheard. Adam Buenosayres wouldn’t even have attempted this impossible feat, had he not found the blind m
an’s tricks and excessive theatricality repugnant to the point of indignation. It should have been easy to shrug off his spell with its cheap props, guitar and all. And yet Adam couldn’t shake the feeling that, as soon as the giant’s voice hailed him, a coin of his would ineluctably end up in the pocket of Polyphemus. The thing was to steer clear of the voice and the visceral commotion it caused him. Through what strategy? By avoiding his irresistible cry. But how? By slipping past the ogre unnoticed. With the help of what resources? Adam trusted in his rubber-soled shoes.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 11