Brought to heel by their guide, the seven men advanced in silence now, eyes peering left and right. A strange ill humour was coming over the group, and a certain nervousness, which peaked when Samuel began to speak again. The philosopher, grave and mysterious, intoned that it didn’t surprise him that the night was getting aggressive, for its silence had been profaned by their vain and puerile chatter. For a while now, he added, certain clues – pointless to reveal them, given the abysmal ignorance of his audience – had given him to understand that they were in a sacred place, whose dangerous nature he couldn’t divulge for now. However, just to give them a taste of what was in store, he warned that the dog barking in the night might well be Cerberus, guardian of the gates of Hades. The impressionable men did not find his observations at all reassuring, and they let him know as much. To top it off, Bernini, carried away perhaps by some folkloric reminiscence, alarmingly suggested that the dogs, whose barking was growing louder, might be chasing a lobisome, or werewolf, the legendary seventh son who used to leave his human form and morph into a barking monster to prowl the night in search of his unspeakable banquet.8 But eventually Franky Amundsen, his urbanity outraged, solemnly declared that he pissed on the sacred silence and on the venerable night and, moreover, on the very spot they were traversing just now; and as for the scary monster, he went on, everyone should just relax, because in case of attack all they had to do was remove the shoe from one of the philosopher’s feet, peal off his sock, and toss it straight at the monster’s snout – an extravagant procedure, if you like, but infallible and authorized by many classical tales. Now, whether by sheer coincidence or as a result of that threat, it so happened that as soon as Franky finished speaking, the ghostly dog stopped barking. The group’s dread turned to astonishment, astonishment gave way to relief, and relief spawned the glory of Franky Amundsen, who thenceforth was held to be a great enchanter and conjuring expert. Unfortunately, that glory quickly lost its lustre when Franky, carried away by excessive pride, formally gave notice of his intention to put the boots to all the ghouls of the night, whether they came at him one at a time or all at once.
– Recklessness! exclaimed the philosopher in metaphysical indignation. You bunch of animals, do you realize where we are?
– Up the bloody creek without a paddle! answered a grouchy Pereda.
– Hmm! mused Samuel. And what if this were a battlefield?
His words were met by impatient growls and incredulous jeers. But the philosopher raised an imperious arm skyward.
– Listen! he exclaimed, ecstatic. Up there, way up high! What do you hear?
Six noses turned upward, tracing a forty-five-degree arc in the shadow, and twelve ears listened attentively.
– Nothing! Bernini said after a few moments. You can’t hear a thing.
– Poor earthly ears! Samuel mumbled testily. You need more than ears to hear the Battle of the Angels.
Although not entirely unexpected, the philosopher’s obscure revelation nonetheless provoked irresistible curiosity in some, skepticism among others, and shock in most of them. Franky Amundsen worried out loud that he must be going deaf, since a while ago the voice of the River Plate had escaped him and now the angels’ fisticuffs were eluding his auditory sense. Luis Pereda confessed his interest in the dubious skirmish on high because, if true, it would confirm the existence of angelic taitas gathered in a celestial ’hood. Del Solar, for his part, expressed his displeasure in tough-talking criollista mode, formally threatening that he was “outtahere” if the others didn’t quit goofing around. But Schultz and Adam clamoured to hear more on the subject; Samuel, thus encouraged, demanded silence and got it. He raised his arm to point at the lights of the city, still visible on the horizon.
– There lies Buenos Aires, he told the group. Two million souls . . .
– Two and half million, Bernini the statistician corrected him.
– I’m talking in round numbers, grunted Samuel. Two million souls caught up, most of them unawares, in a terrible supernatural fight. Two million souls in battle. They fall down here, get up again there, succumb or triumph, oscillating between the two metaphyical poles of the universe.
– Obscure, said Franky.
– Very obscure, Bernini concurred.
But the astrologer Schultz and the poet Adam understood.
– I was talking about a fight here on earth, Samuel continued, an invisible and silent fight. It’s not only men who engage in this metaphysical combat. The true battle is decided above, in the sky over the city: the battle between the angels and the demons who contend for the souls of porteños. Listen! It’s right here, in this suburban wasteland!
– Unforeskinned knave! Franky chipped in. Didn’t we agree that it’s only the fat-assed angels who live around here?
– What fat-assed angels? asked Samuel, disconcerted.
– Schultz’s angels, the ones that are supposed to hatch new neighbourhoods in the Buenos Aires of the future. Hey, just imagine the butts on those broody little angels!
A squall of hilarity shook the group of adventurers. Even Tesler, forgetting his solemnity, let go a guffaw that echoed deep in the night. But the astrologer Schultz, affable as always, explained that his incubator angels could easily exist alongside Samuel’s martial angels, since both types were under the sign of action, the only difference being that his, Schultz’s, were more faithful to the creative aspect of that entity qualified as angelic, according to the Oriental doctrine he professed. And as for the culeiform observation of our friend Franky, he continued, it betrayed the grossest kind of anthropomorphism; only an uncultivated mind, like our friend Franky’s, could attribute human form to an angel. Shamed to the marrow of his bones, Franky asked what form Schultz assigned to his hatching angels. Schultz replied that he’d conceived them in the form of an upright cone whose radius was equal to its height, a design that ensured a base adequate to incubation purposes. But, he added with some reserve, he’d already surpassed his own theory and was currently working out another one, truer and less conventional. When Franky humbly beseeched him for some hint as to his new theory, the astrologer flatly refused, wrapping himself in a silence no one dared disturb.
But there was one among those men who could no longer contain his irritation. Luis Pereda, furiously pacing back and forth in the dark, thundered that he’d had it up to here with angels. The nation’s literature had been suffering an epidemic of angels, he averred, and all this angelic blather was getting to be a royal pain in the arse, etcetera, etcetera. Samuel Tesler responded, threateningly, by asking if the literature of the suburbs that he and his sectarians were promoting wasn’t even more pestilential. Pereda retorted that criollo literature was grounded in Buenos Aires reality, whereas all that angelic junk was like second-hand costume jewellery. Samuel Tesler then called him a blind agnostic and accused him of denying the existence of pure intelligence, because what was truly non-existent was the universe of taitas and compadritos he’d been glorifying with an enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. At this blasphemy, Pereda staggered in the night as if knifed in the back; it was all he could do to stammer that he’d soon show Tesler a couple of nenes who’d knock his socks off.
At the same time, Adam Buenosayres, overwhelmed by anguish, was confiding an intimate secret to the discretion of his brother Franky: yes, the world of angels did exist, and he personally had been struggling with an angel for three months now. It wasn’t a body-to-body combat, naturally, but something like the thrashing of a fish that’s taken the hook and fights the pull of the fisherman. Attentive and respectful, Franky listened to his brother Adam, then embraced him tenderly and implored him to take it easy, assuring him that the fresh night air would soon smarten him up, incredibly sloshed though he was. But far from soothing Adam, Franky’s words only provoked another fit of tears of such emotive depth that Franky, in spite of himself, had to wipe moisture from his ocular conjunctivas.
Meanwhile, the dialectical combat between Samuel and Pereda was heatin
g up – voices were growing shrill, the pipsqueak Bernini was itching to get into it, and Schultz was trying to put some kind of order into their ideas – when suddenly, a frightful shout came out of the dead of night, from not far off. They all went still. What voice could that be? Who was crying out in the night? But Franky quickly recovered his wits.
– It’s Del Solar! he exclaimed. Something’s happened to him.
He ran ahead of the others in the direction of the shout. After twenty paces, he saw a dark figure get up off the ground, vigorously cursing and swearing.
– What’s up? asked Franky, recognizing their guide.
– I tripped over something, said Del Solar. Don’t come near yet.
– What the hell is it? One of those conical angels?
– An angel it ain’t, Del Solar grumbled. Its smell is enough to turn your guts.
Sure enough, as the expeditionaries approached, they detected a suspect fetor in the air.
– It’s a dead body! Bernini finally exclaimed.
Before long they had gathered round the dark form outstretched on the ground. The stench had become unbearable, and they all held their breath, except for the astrologer Schultz, who was inhaling the pestilential air with relish, declaring with ascetic piety that the odour was a great tonic for the soul. Wild conjectures flew as the group tried to identify the shape. But Samuel Tesler, in the nick of time, activated his famous lighter and, by its dim light, the mystery was cleared up: the dark mass that had tripped Del Solar was a dead horse.
The animal appeared phantasmagorical in the quavering light. It was a pampa-brown horse, ugly as can be, with a big head and ungainly feet, its bone structure visible beneath its dirty, mangy hide. Both its eyes were wide open to the night (the left eye had been pecked at by some night buzzard). Its drooping lower lip revealed worn and stained teeth, and from those teeth Adam, almost in tears, plucked a blade of grass the horse would never finish chewing.9 The soil where it lay had been churned up, and Schultz surmised the poor beast must have struggled to stand up when in its death-throes. But he took a keen interest in the little pile of manure deposited beneath the horse’s tail, which elicited from the astrologer a few profound reflexions on the ars cacandi10 and its relation to death.
One can easily imagine the elegies those pious souls dedicated to the deceased pampa-brown. Franky Amundsen stared at it, apparently immersed in a morose meditation that finally yielded this heart-rending aphorism:
– That’s the way it goes!
– Poor old hack, said Bernini, giving the corpse a kick. Its owner left it here to croak – out of sight, out of mind.
– Must have been some ignorant gringo, protested Del Solar. No criollo would abandon his cob so heartlessly.11
The entire group agreed with him. Thus encouraged, Del Solar began to curse the destiny of criollo horsedom. It had figured heroically in all the nation’s great episodes, but had now fallen into the coarse hands of city coachmen. The magnitude of its dishonour was plain to see in the noble steed they beheld before them, victim of a treacherous urbanism that was threatening to ensnare in its web all that was pure in the Argentine tradition. In his rapture, he quoted these memorable verses from a song already in the minds of the adventureres:
Dear little criollo horse,
short in stride
and long in wind.12
Del Solar concluded by taking off his hat in reverence to the fallen beast. The others followed suit, revealing just how close their hearts were to the seraphic spirit of Saint Francis. Then, as though the blood of Martín Fierro were coursing through his veins, Franky Amundsen spoke out in solidarity with his guide: treacherous urbanization notwithstanding, the virtues of the centaur still glowed in our race, for within every Argentine there was a horse in potentia, as had just been revealed by the brilliant orator who had preceeded him. Adam, with no more audience than Schultz and the night, improvised a confused elegy featuring late afternoons in Maipú, radiant dawns, and a hundred horses beating the resonant earth like a drum at high noon on days whose paradisal taste still lingered, as he put it, on the tongue of his soul.
Franky Amundsen understood that so much melancholy risked breaking the spirit of his comrades. He pulled out a flat, gleaming metal bottle, marvellously fitted to his back pocket and endowed with a capaciousness that looked promising even to the least clinical eye. One by one the expeditionaries made use and abuse of the prodigious bottle. Then, prompted by their guide, they set out once more, not without taking their leave of the dead pampa-brown with a final glance. But no sooner had they set out than Del Solar stopped short as if in alarm.
– We’re screwed! he said as he turned to his comrades.
– What is it now? asked Franky.
– We’re lost!
This unpleasant news was not well received. The heroes muttered and grunted their discontent in a distinctly unfriendly way.
– Hell of a guide! Franky griped.
– It’s because of you guys! shouted Del Solar aggressively. All your goddamned arguing put me off the trail.
The injustice of these words exacerbated the group’s discontent to the point of mutiny. The darkness rumbled with hostile voices, malevolent laughter and threats of mass desertion. But then the astrologer Schultz intervened.
– Just a minute! he cried and turned to the guide. Let’s see, now. Where did the trail start?
– Just off Colodrero Street, Del Solar answered.
– In what direction does the street go?
– Northeast, assured Pereda, who as a sterling criollista carried the map of Buenos Aires etched upon his grey matter.
– Does the trail go in the same direction as the street? insisted Schultz.
– No, replied Del Solar. It veers off to the right.
– A lot?
– I’d say about forty degrees.
– Hmm, Schultz concluded, that means the trail follows an almost perfect northerly direction. He tilted his head back and seemed to search for something in the starry vastness.
– The Southern Cross! he exclaimed at last. Its main axis runs between the stars Alpha and Gamma, and right now it is almost perpendicular to the horizon. So Gamma marks the direction we must take.
His observations concluded, Schultz set off decisively, taking over as head of the platoon without a thought for the former guide, who brooded silently over his failure. The men now marched with the confidence inspired by science, their adventurous spirit renewed. The earth stretched out wide and free beneath their feet, and the southern sky enveloped them in the scrutiny of its stars. Although they could see nothing in the dark, their ears picked up myriad sounds from the night – beating feathers, clacking coleopteran wings, rustling leaves, creaking branches, the whole set of instruments being employed by invisible entities to sculpt the hard block of silence. The men breathed the strong odour of autumnal fields, the aroma of earth heavy with seed. A rush of wind, from who knows what far-off place, suddenly lashed the faces of the heroes, prompting various conjectures as to its origin and meaning. Adam Buenosayres, who made an image out of everything,13 took it for the very breath of the pampa. Samuel Tesler scented in that wind an “enormous freshness of Flood,” alleging a sense of smell directly inherited from his forefather Noah. Del Solar, drinking the wind in great draughts, was quick to smell fragrant haystacks, autumn stubble in April fields, crumbling cowflaps, damp clover patches, and little peaches baking in smoky ovens. And though Franky cast doubt on their freakish olfactory capacity, in truth they were filled with legitimate pride at the thought of their immense Argentine homeland, naked and virgin, like a child just delivered from the Creator’s hands. Pride turned to tenderness when the poet Buenosayres, transported in dreams to the eclogues of Maipú, began to sing:
In my poor old shack
vidalitá
there is no peace
ever since he’s been gone
vidalitá
the master of my soul.14
Del Solar, in thr
all to nostalgia for the north country, answered with this one:
Oh, to be a dog,
my little dove,
so as not to be able to feel,
Farewell, sweet life!
Dogs don’t take any offence,
my little dove,
they just sleep it all away,
Farewell, sweet life!15
Franky Amundsen chimed in with this sentimental ditty:
An old woman was taking a leak
(so long, I’m on my way)
underneath a wagon
(who will be her love!)
and the oxen took off running
(so long, I’m on my way)
thinking it was a rainstorm
(who will be her love!).16
But the contest would not have been complete without the voice of Luis Pereda. With fine grace, giving it his all, he threw to the winds the following verses:
From up yonder I have come /
(not a word of a lie)
stepping on the flowers
(let’s go, sweetie, under the walnut tree):
Since I’m a sensitve lad
(not a word of a lie)
I’m all worn out from love
(let’s go, sweetie, under the walnut tree).17
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 22