– Aunty, aunty! sobbed Márgara as Gertrudis hugged her.
– There, there, Gertrudis’s voice purred affectionately. Calm down, my child, calm down.
Dolores and Leonor dabbed their eyes with a hanky. A buzz of excitement rippled through the circle of onlookers hanging back among the shadows as they lapped up every last detail of the scene.
– They are the aunts, intoned the chorus.
– The aunts?
– That’s right, the aunts.
– What aunts?
– Aunts.
The chorus fell silent, for Márgara was once again braiding the thread of her psalmodic lament.
– Poor old man! she chanted quietly. How come he left us, aunty? How come? And what a way to go! Suffering right up till the end. What did he do in this world that God had to punish him so? Poor dear man, poor dear!
– Patience, Márgara, murmured the Neighbour Lady in Red.
But Márgara didn’t even hear her.
– All night long he was moaning in misery, she chanted. I’ll never be able to forget it. Never! Those cries of distress will be in my ears forever and ever!
She beat her ears with both fists and shook the snakes of her Gorgonian head. The Three Sisters-in-Law again made use of their grieving hankies; meanwhile, the chorus rustled in the shadows, not speaking, but now tense as a bowstring. The Neighbour Lady in Red caressed Márgara’s hair and insisted:
– Patience, Márgara. You’ll find peace eventually. This too shall pass. It’s all a matter of time.
Márgara gave her a ferocious look, as though mortally offended by the suggestion that her pain might not be eternal.
– Never! she protested after a bit. Obviously, lady, you’ve never had to suffer like me!
– But my child! exclaimed the Lady in Red. I’ve done my share of grieving, too; I know what it’s like. Don’t kid yourself, Márgara. You’ll get over it.
– No, I won’t! shouted Márgara, totally obstinate.
– Yes, you will! screeched the Neighbour Lady in Red. She was getting right ticked off now. Did the stupid little twit think she was only one in the world to ever have somebody die on her? And if it was a question of tallying up the deaths in one’s family, why, the Neighbour Lady in Red was ready to lay a whole cemetery’s worth on the table.
Márgara, however, began to kick and thrash like crazy. The chorus made noises of protest.
– Don’t contradict her.
– Let her get it out of her system.
– The one in Red is handling this wrong.
– No, she’s right, she’s talking reason.
– The girl’s in no state to hear reason right now!
– That’s right! Of course!
Márgara didn’t kick and thrash for long. In the purple lamplight, her tense face began to relax until she seemed subdued and thoughtful. Suddenly, an irrepressible smile came to her lips. Ooh, aah! The neighbour ladies smiled in amazement, and the chorus smiled in the shadows. Ooh, aah! What was this? Márgara, smiling and sobbing, told them: just before he died, the great Robles, referring to the young doctor in attendance who happened to be in the other room, had winked at Márgara and said: “Looks like that lad finds you attractive. Make the most of it, sweetie!”
In the telling, Márgara chortled playfully. The neighbour ladies laughed somewhat louder, and chorus was invaded by sympathetic hilarity.
– That Don Juan!
– One heck of a criollo!
– No way! Joking around like that on his deathbed – what a rascal!
– Isn’t that Juan all over!
The chorus got more excited. There was more laughing and talking – ah, good old Juan! Still giggling, Márgara turned to her three necrophile aunts and saw their faces of stone. They hadn’t laughed. With a violent start, Márgara woke up to reality and took to moaning and groaning more pathetically than ever. Doña Tecla, phlegmatic, began again to rub her temples with her handkerchief; the ladies in Red and Blue moved away from the bed; and the chorus lurking in the shadows fell abruptly silent. The lowing trailed off little by little as Márgara entered a deepening torpor, her Gorgonian head swaying back and forth like a pendulum until, with a final roll, it came to rest on the pillows. There was a vast silence, pierced only by the loud tick-tock of the alarm clock on the bedside table. All the figures were motionless; a drizzle of something like ash or tedium seemed to blur the contours of the tableau. Then all of a sudden a belligerent clamour broke out in the other room; the two neighbour ladies exchanged a look of intelligence.
– The kids, muttered the one in Red.
– The little devils! assented the one in Blue.
The women made for the door with maternal haste. Flinging it open, they irrupted into a tumultuous theatre of war.
The room was in total disarray. Furniture and knick-knacks from the other rooms had been stored in here, scattered and stacked any which way. The only stick of furniture still in its usual position was a double bed pushed up against a wall. Four chubby babies, bundled up to the neck, had been laid across it, and they were sleeping blissfully. The neighbour ladies’ maternal gaze did not rest long on the idyllic bed, however. Their eyes quickly swerved to the middle of the room where Pancho and Manuel, two of God’s little angels, were pummelling each other with pillows. The champions shrieked in triumph at each blow given, and shouted an imprecation at every blow received. Absorbed in the fight, they didn’t notice that their arena of single combat had been invaded by mothers. But when the two women advanced menacingly toward them, floor shaking under their massive legs, the heroes, visibly discomfited, dropped their feathery weapons and beat a hasty retreat. Blindly, Pancho ran straight into the arms of the Neighbour Lady in Red, and two ringing slaps, one on each cheek, were the epilogue to his epic story.
– Go outside with your father! the one in Red shouted at him, pointing with her thick index finger toward the door to the patio.
At the same time, with greater skill or better fortune, Manuel had escaped into the labyrinth of piled-up stuff. Safely entrenched between a folding metal cot and a large trunk, he peered out at the woman in Blue.
– Come out of there, bandit! she cried, brandishing a slipper.
“Sure, one of these days,” Manuel thought to himself, eyeing the slipper with an eloquent expression.
The Neighbour Lady in Blue was about to storm the trenches, when one of the babies started crying at the top of its lungs.
– Poor little angel! she exclaimed and flew instead to the bed. She took the caterwauling babe into her arms and planted a gargantuan kiss on each cheek.
– They woke you up, didn’t they, sweetheart. There, there. It was that bandit, that scoundrel Manuel!
But the sweetheart, in no mood for chitchat, just turned up the volume on his wailing. In response, the woman in Blue deftly unbuttoned her blouse, laid bare a breast brimming over in plenitude, and executed the most ancient gesture in the world as she offered it to the squalling mouth. The baby clamped fiercely onto the purple nipple, let go for a moment to gaze at his mother with a beatific smile, then tucked in again, his little eyes half closing. Ensconced in his famous trench, the bandit Manuel saw the storm was blowing over.
Pancho, his cheeks burning and brow furrowed, had gone outside to ruminate over the humiliation of the two smacks he’d so insultingly received in front of his rival. His imagination was brewing up ominous plans of revenge that might adequately chastise the intolerable abuse of maternal privilege. This time, he thought, she’d gone too far. Truth was, Pancho was vacillating between two equally seductive projects: either run away from home, or poison himself with a box of matches. The first design tempted with its promise of adventures beyond even Salgari’s4 wildest dreams. The second plan, however, was irresistibly fascinating for its wealth of dramatic effects. With bitter delight he savoured in advance the remorse that would weigh on his family when he, Pancho Ramírez, was no longer in this tempest-tossed world of slaps-in-the-face and was
lying in state in his little white coffin. His primary school classmates would come to the funeral, maybe carrying the flag and everything. By this point in his reverie, the two smacks and the recent dishonour were forgotten, and Pancho fell into a weepy tenderness inspired instead by his own premature death. Thus musing, Pancho headed for the group of men outside drinking mate. He gingerly went up to his father, nervous that he might have to explain why he was out here among the men.
Fortunately, Don José Ramírez was holding forth just then, and when Don José was talking (which was all the time), the sky could come tumbling down around him and he wouldn’t miss a beat. The men of the neighbourhood were sitting beneath the autumnal grapevine, conversing alongside the rectangle of light projected onto the patio tiles from the chapel of rest. Through withered leaves of the vine, a few stars twinkled. Don José, quite the gentleman in his straw chair, was sitting opposite Zanetti, the bilious bill collector. To the right of Don José was the antique profile of Reynoso, who sat with a tin kettle and a mate gourd at his bunion’d feet. Indifferent to the tertulia, the Young Neighbour listened distractedly and fidgeted interminably with his little hat – the kind toffs wear, Pancho thought, as he tried to remember where he’d seen that guy before.
– Just imagine, said Don José in a jocular tone, warming to the story he was in midst of telling. There they all are at the table – the two guys from Corrientes, my brother Goyo, and the Brazilian – dealing cards to beat the band, totally wrapped up in a cut-throat game of truco. And under the same roof, right beside Goyo, the corpse of the “little angel” is layin’ there among his four candles and already smellin’ bad, poor little guy . . .
– Hmm, hmm, growled Zanetti, making a slurping noise with the bombilla.
– In the other shack, Don José went on, there’s a few couples dancing away to the accordion. And the guy with the squeeze box, the gals, the ranch hands, they’re all pissed to the gills.
– Absolute barbarity! the collector muttered between his teeth, as he handed the mate back to Reynoso.
The old man took it pensively, adjusted the bombilla in the gourd, then refilled it.
– That’s what they used to believe, he argued without looking at Zanetti. A kid dies? A little angel is on his way to heaven! Cause for celebration.
– Superstition, grumbled Zanetti. Lack of culture.
– Maybe, murmured old man Reynoso, slowly sucking at the bombilla.
Don José, getting visibly impatient, raised his hand.
– Well, now comes the good part, he announced jovially. Like I was saying, the guys were playing hard. The Brazilian, he was losing a fortune, and fuming every time Goyo took a trick. Because Goyo was a real card sharp – he needed an ace, he got one, even if he had to pull it out of his sleeve. Maybe the Brazilian started to suspect something fishy, I don’t know. But anyways, all of sudden he pulls out a huge revolver and points it at Goyo: Eu meto bala en vocé!, I’ll put a bullet in you! Holy jumpin’. Goyo, he’s unarmed, so guess what he does. He grabs the “little angel” by the feet and starts little-angeling the Brazilian with several good whacks.
– Goodness! commented Reynoso, hiding a smile behind his tobacco-stained mustache.
– You think I’m making this up? Don José asked him, laughing already.
– No, no, said Reynoso. So, whose kid was the “little angel”?
– I’m getting to that. Hearing all the hubbub, an old crone comes hobbling in, grabs the “little angel” from Goyo, and – pff, pff, pff, pff! – blows out the four candles. “Any more horse-play,” the old coot scolds, “and the wake’s over.”
Choking with laughter, Don José leaned back to rest his shiny bald head against the wall, and remained there for a while facing the sky. Then, still laughing, he looked around at the others and saw two serious faces. Zanetti, bitter as ever, and a pensive Reynoso were both facing the door of the chapel. Don José caught the sorrowful significance of their look, and his hilarity dried up immediately. Putting on a solemn face, he lowered his brow as though weighed down by gloomy thoughts. Still fingering his derby, the Young Neighbour glanced now and again at the street door, clearly anxious to leave. Pancho hadn’t taken his eyes off him for a minute, and now he finally recognized him. He was the dude who flirted with the dark-haired girl from the warehouse; more than once Pancho had shouted at him: “Leave that bone alone, doggie!” The mystery solved, Pancho snuggled up against his father’s chair and yawned deep and long. All in all, a wake wasn’t near as much fun as the boys made it out to be.
The collector Zanetti was getting ready to speak. In his infinite resentment, Zanetti had come to divide Humanity (with a capital “H”) into two irreconcilable camps. On one side of the battle line stood he, Antonio Zanetti, with his endlessly aching feet and the rancour he’d accumulated trying to collect abstract sums of money from certain people as slippery as eels. On the other side was the World (with a capital “W”). And a sinister conspiracy organized against Zanetti, it was: a clew of travesties, iniquities, and aberrations that Zanetti promised to fix if only he were allowed to be president for twenty-four hours. Men and women, beasts, and inanimate objects all had it in for the collector. He was certain, for example, that when he was going home at night with his feet in a sorry state, the cobblestones intentionally stood on end with the express purpose of exacerbating his martyrdom. But once he was home and his tortured feet were soaking in a basin of warm water, the collector Zanetti let himself taste glory as he dreamed up elaborate fantasies of revenge against Society, World, and cobblestones. He’d show them who Zanetti was! And no, he didn’t lack for courage! During the Semana Trágica of 1919,5 the collector Zanetti, well hidden in the chicken coop out back, had fired all six bullets from his revolver into the air. Ever since that memorable occasion, his self-image had been contradictory: the collector both admired and feared himself.
Fortunately, Zanetti’s current cogitations had nothing aggressive about them. Right now his mind was ploughing richer earth. At first, he was revolted by the imbecilic Don José’s brutish story; it illustrated once again all the ignorance, obscurantism, and superstition the collector insistently opposed with one of his lapidary dictums: “More schools, fewer priests.” Next, and quite understandably, the storyteller’s obstreperous hilarity had just about made his blood boil and rush to his head, for all thoughtless laughter grated on his ears like a slap across the face of Humanity itself. And the collector Zanetti, in a voice from the beyond, was wont to ask those cachinnating barbarians: Does Humanity have the right to laugh? Finally, the collector’s philosophical soul ascended to the plane of generalizations: he thought about the wake, indeed about all wakes, and about the routine of men “whose feet are still fettered and pinned by absurd prejudice.” This last phrase wasn’t actually his own; he’d got it from La Brecha,6 a morning paper he read religiously, not only during his daily foot-soak, but also – more discreetly – during the concluding operation of his digestive tract. In short, it was no wonder that by this time Zanetti was trembling like a generous fruit tree beneath its embarrassment of riches.
– Vanity! he scolded at last, shaking his head from side to side.
Don José was taking a pull on the latest round of mate, which Reynoso had just brewed up bitter-style, unsweetened. He glanced at Zanetti in mild surprise.
– What’d you say? he asked.
– That, over there! said the collector pointing at the mortuary chamber.
– A-hah! Don José replied cautiously.
Old man Reynoso sighed.
– Yes, yes, he murmured. Poor old Juan.
But Zanetti stared hard at him.
– I’m not talking about the dead, he grumbled. What do I care about dead men? I’m talking about the living. There’s the cadaver, starting to rot already, and what do the living do? Tart it up with rags and lights and flowers. What for? Just to satisfy their own vanity. Dead men!
Don José ventured a half smile.
– It’s custom,
he said. I wouldn’t get my britches in a twist over it.
– Custom, you say! objected Zanetti. I’ll show you customs! (It was the collector Zanetti’s standing promise that he would ban all traditional customs if ever he was given the presidency of the Argentine Republic for twenty-four hours.)
– But that’s how things are, my friend, laughed Don José. You too will be adorned and saluted when you go off in your funeral coach, just like you adorned and saluted the ones who left this world before you.
Zanetti didn’t conceal the anger these words provoked.
– I don’t take off my hat for funeral coaches! he growled. It’s just bourgeois prejudice! (The collector Zanetti never took off his hat in front of churches or funeral coaches, but he did so unctuously before conventillos, hospitals, and penitentiaries. A bitter enemy of all superstition, Zanetti spilled salt on purpose, broke mirrors, beat black cats, and ate meat on Good Friday.)
– Fine! rejoined Don José, quite amused. But when you’ve become a stiff yourself, they’re gonna fix you all up nice with lights and flowers. And you’ll have nothing to say about it.
For the first time that night, a smile lit up the sour face of the collector Zanetti.
– They’re going to be out of luck! he said with perverse joy.
– How’s that?
– I’ve already made my will, laughed Zanetti. I’m leaving my body to the Society for the Incineration of Cadavers. Oh no, they’re not going get the better of me. I’ve got it all arranged: a van with no cross or flowers or anything. Straight to the crematorium!
Don José and Reynoso stared at him slack-jawed, and Zanetti enjoyed his future triumph in those two living effigies of astonishment. Yep, it was a brilliant move, a direct poke in the jaw to priests, undertakers, the municipality, florists, gravediggers, marble masons, and all the shysters who worked the death racket. Don José, however, quickly recovered his joviality.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 28