Adam Buenosayres: A Novel

by Leopoldo Marechal

  – Can’t say I admire your taste, he told the collector. Burning a person like he was an old piece of junk . . .

  – Hmm! assented Reynoso, pensive.

  – So what? argued Zanetti. It’s more economical. And more hygienic! (The collector Zanetti didn’t bathe for months on end, but when it came to his corpse he was scrupulously conscious of social hygiene.)7

  – Have you ever seen a corpse burn? Don José asked him. They say when it’s in the oven, it stands up and shakes its arms and legs.

  – The last dance! said Zanetti, who had never danced in his life.

  – Bah! concluded Don José. Give me the good old earth and the birds singing.

  Reynoso passed him a mate.

  – Good old earth, he echoed sententiously.

  The three men fell silent, perhaps following their internal train of thought. With admirable discretion, the Young Neighbour had got to his feet to have a look at the row of geraniums that just happened to end at the door to the street. He was moving further and further away, one geranium at a time, studying the details of flowers and leaves with a highly suspect intensity of interest. Leaning against his dad’s chair, Pancho was nodding between wakefulness and sleep. Zanetti had blown off steam now, and Don José showed no sign of breaking his silence. Reynoso, however, was in the grip of ancient and venerable memories; he kept on sighing and looking over at the chapel. There was something he wanted to say, but didn’t, vacillating between reserve and an emotion welling up inside him.

  – Were you very good friends? Don José finally asked him with extraordinary delicacy.

  – Almost brothers, answered Reynoso. We were buddies as young bucks. I was best man at his wedding, and I’m godfather to Márgara. Think of it!

  – Yes, yes, Don José encouraged him.

  – And look at him now, poor guy! concluded the old man with a sigh.

  – Everybody’s gotta go some time, Don José said sententiously. Sooner or later . . .

  – That’s right, said Reynoso. But there’s certain things . . . Aw, what the hell!

  The old man passed a hand across his brow, as if wanting to erase some strange notion. But he could see the question forming in Don José’s affable eyes and he took the plunge:

  – Have you seen the deceased?

  – Yes, answered Don José. You’d think he was asleep.

  – Did you see the suit they dressed him in? insisted Reynoso in a low voice.

  Don José looked at him a bit anxiously.

  – Yes, he said. A dark suit. What about it?

  – It’s the suit he got married in, Reynoso declared. Thirty-two years ago, on a night like this, I helped him into it myself, before we left for the church. The very same suit!

  – Hmm! agreed Don José. Now I get it. Well, if you stop to think what a man’s life is . . .

  – Life! Zanetti growled bitterly.

  – Bah, life’s a dream, Don José concluded.

  Adrift on the gentle current of memory, Reynoso smiled, more at his reminiscences, however, than at his pensive partners in conversation.

  – I can still see him! he said. Out on the patio, people calling for him: “The groom, the groom!” And me, trying to get that goddam stiff collar to fit him! Old Juan, he could hardly move in those trousers, he was so used to his baggy gaucho pants.

  – Good man on a horse, murmured Don José pensively.

  – Who, Juan? Reynoso considered. He was every inch a horseman.

  He stroked his mustache with a sunbaked hand.

  – Yep, he said. A night just like tonight, must be thirty-two years gone by . . .

  Ah, what a night it was! Guitar, violin, and flute . . . To the inner rhythmn of a lost mazurka, now recovered in memory, old man Reynoso is replaying the scene: the grand patio with its carpet and tent, and the wedding procession opulent as an Independence Day celebration on the Twenty-Fifth of May, no expenses spared. The two coupés arrive from the church, amid a swarm of kids shrieking “Godfather! Penniless godfather!” He, Reynoso, responds to the ritual challenge by throwing handfuls of pennies; sprays of tinkling metal hit the cobblestones, and the kids swarm after them, snatching coins from beneath the horses’ hooves. Later, the dance begins – guitar, violin, and flute – “Square dance! Choose your partners!” The groom takes the bride, the best man and future godfather takes the godmother, and the young people pair up laughing, hand in hand, eyes looking into eyes. Bravo! The old folks look on from the sidelines and raise glasses filled to the brim. The kids buzz avidly around the tray loaded with a tall tower of sugar, as well as two figurines of barley sugar, a bride and a groom. The musicians are playing like demons – guitar, violin, and flute. Midnight strikes! Yes, the bride must be spirited away! Discreetly. Who by? Reynoso! While Juan waits outside on the street, standing beside a rented horse-and-buggy, Reynoso gives the signal to the musicians, and they play “Waltz Over the Waves”:

  Waves that break and die

  plaintive at my feet . . .8

  Watch! Reynoso whirls, his guiding arm around the bride’s waist. He makes his way among the spinning couples, crosses the entire patio, and sneaks her into the vestibule. Nobody has seen the subterfuge. Reynoso returns triumphant: “The newlyweds have left!” he shouts. “Oh, no!” protest the dancers. “You sly old fox, Reynoso.” Guitar, violin, and flute! Old man Reynoso, carried away, wants to cling to the hallucinatory images. But Zanetti’s voice breaks the spell, and old man Reynoso awakens with a start to find himself once more beside the rectangle of light projected onto the tiled patio from Juan’s funeral chapel.

  – Death, Zanetti has said. Same thing for everyone. It’s the only justice there is in this world!

  A single tear rolls down Reynoso’s cheek.

  – That’s right, he agrees. No way around it.

  Don José hands him the empty mate. Reynoso goes to refill it, but there’s no water left.

  – Son of a beehive! exclaims the old man. We drank the kettle dry.

  – Yep, Don José adds. Just like out on the range.

  – I’m going to see if there’s more in the kitchen, says Reynoso.

  Kettle in hand, he slowly ambles away.

  – Lovely old guy, murmurs Don José turning toward the collector, who is lost in thought.

  Zanetti says nothing, so Don José for a long while caresses the head of his little Pancho, the boy now wandering the outskirts of dreamland. From the geraniums over to the street door, there’s not a soul in sight. The Young Neighbour has flown the coop.

  Reynoso could have gone in and out of the illustrious kitchen a hundred times, and the denizens of that Olympus would scarcely have noticed his venerable humanity. It was a narrow space built of wood and zinc, equipped with a two-burner, cast-iron stove. Lying in harmonious arrangement on a pine table covered by a red oilcloth were a heel of sausage still impaled on a fork, one bottle of caña quemada and another of anisette, a grimy coffee pot, and few squalid cups.

  Though the mise-en-scène was humble, the actors were of magnificent stature. The whole criollo Parnassus was gathered there. (Eminent figures one and all, they were waiting patiently in the wings, in unjust anonymity, for the Homer who might plunge them into the delicious scandal of glory.) Juan José Robles, scratching the ears of the puppy dog called Balín, headed up the group of criollista divinities. On his left, the taita Flores, majestically seated upon an empty kerosene box, was the centre of attention; his audience was coaxing a story, episode by episode, out of the taita’s unfathomable modesty. To the right of Juan José was the melancholy effigy of the pesado Rivera, the heavy who served both as Flores’s bodyguard and as occasional cup-bearer at this feast; his generous hand flew to the bottle at the slighest indication that any of the heroes was going dry. Facing the three eminent figures just named, sat three engrossed souls: those of the pipsqueak Bernini, Del Solar, and Pereda. Reverentially hanging on the taita’s every word, the audience of three never took their eyes off him, except to exchange a look of ap
preciation each time Flores revealed a new facet of his intricate personality. The research project those scholars had been working on was no small beer. It’s well known that criollo bravery, once personified in the sublime gaucho Martín Fierro, had evolved into the semi-rural heroism of a Juan Moreira,9 to conclude in the urban bellicosity of the glorious lineage of malevos who flourished in Buenos Aires in the years just before and after the turn of the twentieth century. Now, according to Del Solar and his scholarly buddies, the taita Flores was the last in the line of classical malevos, a living document generously offering itself to be read hic et nunc. No wonder, then, that the criollista bards plied the taita with questions as if he were the Delphic Apollo in rope-soled sandals. No doubt about it, a subtle sense of smell would have picked up an aroma of legend wafting in the kitchen, over and above the one emanating from the garlic sausage.

  But, alas! Not all was fervor and reverence in that Olympus: the naysayers, the mockers, the eternal agnostics constituted a third contingent, which included Adam Buenosayres, the astrologer Schultz, Samuel Tesler, and Franky Amundsen. An insolent mob, they couldn’t ask but had to continually shout for the bottle. When their poisonous tongues weren’t rustling like sibilant scorpions, they would explode into offensive laughter and interrupt the storyteller, disconcerting the three studious listeners, who sensed that catastrophe was imminent.

  The taita Flores, aware of the ambience of veneration surrounding him, stopped talking yet again to turn a long face toward the group of mockers. Pereda attempted to save the situation:

  – And were there a lot of people? he asked.

  – A lil’ old hoe-down on the patio, Flores answered. The Froilán women-folk used to organize dances with a coupla kilos of mate and a demijohn of whatever was around.

  – And how ’bout the Froilán broad, a good-looker or what? asked Bernini in his best underworld accent.

  The taita lowered his eyes and spat out a splinter of the toothpick he’d been gnawing.

  – She had the right stuff, he said at last. She had tango in her blood. When she really got into it, she used to cut figure eights that had the dance-floor sweatin’ sawdust.

  – Wow! Pereda was ecstatic.

  – And did they hit on her much in the ’hood? Del Solar threw out the barbed question.

  The taita’s smile mixed menace and swagger.

  – Maybe, he said. I didn’t see nuthin.

  – You kiddin’ me? Rivera growled in adulation. Nobody came sniffing around the taita Flores’s nest.

  – Sure, sure, Del Solar quickly admitted, seeing a malignant gleam in the taita’s eye.

  For a long while, Juan José Robles had been stroking the ears of the puppy dog Balín, but now he broke his silence.

  – What about the tirifilo Nievas, the pretty-boy? he drawled.

  Flores’s face clouded over, and vexation glinted in his gaze, as if the name made his blood simmer with an old grudge.

  – I was getting to that, snarled the taita. Yeah, Pretty-Boy Nievas.

  – So, who was the tirifilo? asked Del Solar.

  – Son of the police chief, Flores answered. A no-account twit. The punk had a taste for slumming it. He’d picked up a rep as a tough guy, just because two or three times, in brawls in Palermo, he’d had fisticuffs with his old man’s White Spittoons.

  Del Solar and Pereda exchanged an eloquent look. The famous Son of the Police Chief! So the legend was true!

  – Who were the White Spittoons? Bernini interrupted emotionally.

  – Police officers, Rivera clarified. In those days they wore white helmets.

  Del Solar had a few points to clear up.

  – Wait a minute! he said. How did Pretty-Boy Nievas used to dress?

  The taita was quiet as he seemed to search his memory.

  – Yep, he said at last. Narrow grey trousers with black bands down the seams. And his sports jacket was a shit-standing-upper . . .

  – What? Bernini burst out.

  – It was a style of jacket kinda on the short side, Rivera explained. So, as a joke, we called it . . .

  – Yes, yes, Del Solar interrupted impatiently. What else did the tirifilo wear?

  – High-heeled ankle boots, a cheap scarf around his neck, and a beaver hat on his mop.

  Del Solar and Pereda looked at each other again, feverish with the same enthusiasm. The description was accurate!

  – Very good, Flores, my friend! Del Solar approved. So what went down with you and the pretty-boy?

  – Nuthin, Flores answered. The lad took a notion to get fresh with my gal, according to what I heard. I asked her about it, in case she’d given him any encouragement. You know how skirts can be.

  – Hmm! agreed Bernini, sounding like a man who’d been burned.

  – But the gal was on the up-and-up, added Flores. So I waited for my chance.

  – Where’d you mix it up with the tirifilo? asked Del Solar, giving his words a tough edge.

  The taita hung back, tired and modest.

  – It’s not worth telling, he said at last. He was a silly little compadrito.

  – Tell us, Flores, Rivera asked him.

  – Don’t play hard-to-get, said Juan José, quite absorbed in watching Balín try to bite his tail.

  After considerable begging, the taita Flores gave in. He frowned, cleared his throat two or three times, and shot a sidelong glance at the group of mockers, who really were starting to get up his nose.

  – Okay, he said. The fight took place at the dance the Froilán girls put on. People were dancing up a storm on the patio, and everything was fine ’til Pretty-Boy and his gang showed up. They’re all half sloshed, and the tirifilo barges in like he owns the place and shouts: “Clear the decks!” The music stops, the women’re all a-flutter, and the Froilán girls look at me scared.

  – They knew what was coming! exclaimed Rivera.

  – And did you go for him on the spot? asked Del Solar, drunk with courage.

  The taita smiled placidly.

  – I knew Pretty-Boy real good, he answered. And, of course, I cut him some slack. So the dance just started up again. As soon as they started playing “El Choclo,”10 I see the tirifilo trying to get my gal to dance, and I see, too, that she’s resisting. So, sitting right where I was, without getting up, I shout: “Listen, kiddo, that woman don’t dance!” The music stopped again, the couples separated. The tirifilo, he gets his dander up and shouts back: “We’ll see about that!”

  – The kid had balls, Bernini ventured.

  – All mouth, no action, like the chajá, muttered Rivera.

  – And what did you do? asked Del Solar, looking the taita in the eyes.

  – I got up real slow, Flores responded. I gave the pretty-boy the onceover from head to foot. Then I says, “Have it your way, then. My game is calling me!” and I start crossing the room. The women start squealing and the men are all worked up. But then the tirifilo pulls out a heater . . .

  – A heater? exclaims Pereda, scandalized.

  – He was real tough with a gun in his hand, assented the taita sadly. So he’s pointing the heater at me and he shouts, “One more step and I’ll shoot!”

  – And you? asked Del Solar, knitting his brow.

  – Me, I slip out my blade and walk towards the pretty-boy, drilling him through with my eyes. “Go ahead and shoot,” I says. “But don’t miss! Because if you go and miss, my blade here says you’re chopped liver!”

  – He missed, I can just see it!

  – Nope. Couldn’t even shoot, said Flores sorrowfully. As soon as my words were out, the tirifilo turned white as a sheet, and the revolver started shaking in his hand. I took it away, so he wouldn’t hurt himself.

  – A pretty-boy! scoffed Del Solar.

  – A silly little malevo, the taita declared indulgently. Did the women ever laugh!

  The group fell silent in adulation. The three scholars stared at Flores as if they’d just discovered who he was.11 The lines hardened around the pesado
Rivera’s mouth. The taita bowed his head as though overburdened by laurels. Only Juan José Robles seemed indifferent to the emotion of the moment, absorbed as he was in the antics of the puppy dog Balín, who was now playfully biting his shoe. But just then a brutish guffaw erupted from the circle of mockers; the criollistas came plummeting down from the heights of heroic inspiration and in unison turned to look angrily at the trouble-makers.

  – Now they’ve got me mad! growled the taita, screwing up his mug threateningly.

  Del Solar, on tenterhooks, tried to calm him down.

  – Don’t pay any attention to them, he said. They’re completely shitfaced.

  – This ain’t no speakeasy, insisted Flores. They’ve got me pissed off with all their laughing.

  The pesado Rivera piped up in turn.

  – Shhh! he ordered the mockers. You’re at a funeral wake!

  At that point something outrageous happened. Franky Amundsen, obviously the ringleader of the dissident faction in the kitchen, turned to the pesado Rivera, held out his hand imperiously, and, eyes a-glint, slurred a thick-tongued order:

  – Pash ’e bottle, pard’!

  Utterly flummoxed by the sheer audacity of it, the pesado mechanically handed him the bottle and came to his senses only when Franky handed it back to him, after having generously refreshed his friends’ glasses. In a sublime gesture, the pesado filled his own glass and sent it down the hatch, perhaps wishing to drown the speck of rage already fermenting in his kidneys. That was arguably the moment when Rivera began to incubate in his mind the brilliant manoeuvre with the shoe, an act that was subsequently to put an end to the hostilities.

  With the storm rumbling on the horizon, it’s time we took a look at the heterodox group in the kitchen, if only to get a faint idea as to what those inebriated intellectuals were getting up to, drunk as they were on something more than glory. What was the reason for the laughter? Could they, as innocent victims of the illustrious bottle, have been forgetting the norms of intellectual decorum? No, they were not the sort of men who hang their virtue in a noose from the sarmentous tree of Dionysus! On the contrary, in that sector there were a few men whose intelligence reached its zenith only after they’d achieved a goodly blood-alcohol coefficient. Such, for example, was Franky Amundsen, descendant of those Vikings who in bygone times used to drink themselves blotto with absolute dignity under the northern lights. So, too, Samuel Tesler, scion in a direct blood line of the wine grower Noah. And thus as well Adam Buenosayres, whose genealogical tree could well have been a grapevine, bearing in mind the crew of insatiable drinkers on both sides of his family who had preceded him in the sublime art of raising a glass. No less scholarly than their counterparts, these heresiarchs likewise observed, sorted out, and analyzed the stuff of life that chance put in their path. However, the observations they made about the storytelling taita Juan José Robles and the pesado Rivera were characterized by a scientific rigour and a philosophical universality that it would have been pointless to expect from the romantic emotion of the three criollista scholars.