The case of Juan José Robles, it may safely be affirmed, was not at all difficult. This individual displayed the most salient traits of the vegetative soul; hence, following a motion by the academician Buenosayres, Juan Robles was placed ipso facto in the Vegetable Realm. The taita Flores would have been similarly classified, had the opinion of Amundsen prevailed. Fortunately, however, other fellows of the Academy had seen the taita manifest certain characteristics of the sensitive soul: to wit, the senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste, as well as anger; these signs having been duly noted, Flores was catalogued forthwith under the Animal Realm. True, Amundsen did not give in easily; he stubbornly attributed to the taita a sort of inferior animality, going so far as to suspect he was equipped with a scaley dermis and a vestigial air bladder. The Academy received this argument with a formidable guffaw, and poor Amundsen held his tongue for the time being.
The debate about the pesado Rivera, though, was of quite a different order. The researchers coincided, with rare unanimity, in granting him the fullness of the sensitive soul, crowning him with the status of animaldom, and declaring him to be essentially brutum. Nevertheless, this bare-bones classification was considered insufficient, and further precision was deemed necessary. Accordingly, a list of pertinent questions was drawn up. Could Rivera distinguish the range of sensations between intense heat and intense cold? Was he able to differentiate among the colours, or was he totally colour blind? Were his eyes multifaceted like those of the fly, or simple like those of the opossum? Did he emit phosphorescence at night? Did he have a full olfactory range? Did he usually find his way back to his lair using his sense of smell? Did he piss against walls with one leg raised? How subtle was his sense of hearing? Did he register any other tastes besides those of booze, mate, and tobacco? Was his body covered in fur, feathers, or a carapace? Did he shed his skin annually? Then, upon recalling that memory, instinct, and imagination all formed part of animal nature, the academicians formulated the following questions. Did Rivera remember the place where he ate and slept? Did his memory retain insults, pleasures, and punishments? Was he in rut at a certain time of the year? Did he bark at the moon in the night? Did he have premonitions of death, risk, and storms? Did he have erotic dreams and dreams of the hunt?
Such questions were posed and dealt with on the spot, and the intellectual pleasure produced by this analytical exercise was quite often expressed in the form of noisy hilarity. But the astrologer Schultz’s silence had been weighing heavily on the Academy and finally he manifested his disdain for the individual under discussion. After heaping abuse upon the paleo-taitas present among them, he mysteriously announced the reign of the Neotaita in the near future. Pressed by the academician Amundsen to declare whether the Neotaita could be distinguished in any way from the Neocriollo, Schultz responded by saying that the Neotaita would be an aspect of the Neocriollo. The former would be characterized by his enormously developed kidneys, the organ of Mars, for purposes of war. Unfortunately, this attempt to orient the debate in a metaphysical direction didn’t get very far. The Academy fell back on the terrain of pure biology when Franky Amundsen solemnly proposed a study be carried out on the pesado Rivera. Franky’s research plan was vast; it included longitudinal and transversal cross-sections of the pesado, urine and blood analyses, Wassermann reaction, measurements of dilational coefficient, material tensile strength and specific gravity, as well as X-rays and an autopsy.
Wildly enthusiastic, the academician Buenosayres not only supported the Amundsen project, but also proposed, in a sudden flash of insight, that Rivera be studied as if he were a country. This new perspective infinitely widened the scope of the investigation. They would need to submit the pesado Rivera to mensurations and triangulations, geological and meteorological studies, dams, marine surveys, frontier demarcations, explorations of his forests and mountain ranges. Then the academician Tesler, carried away by the utilitarianism characteristic of his race, suggested the advisability of adding to their study of the pesado a series of diagrams and statistical tables, with particular reference to his annual production of fingernails, body hair, and dandruff; the voltage of his motor energy; his normal output of guano, textiles, and crude oils; the extent of his petroleum deposits; his hotsprings, coral reefs, and fish stocks, etcetera etcetera. For the academician Tesler recognized that such data were indispensable for any rational industrialization of the pesado Rivera. It was at this point in the discussion that the academics let fly the universal guffaw that had set everyone’s nerves on edge over on the other side of the kitchen.
The pesado’s silence was aggressive; the taita Flores looked menacing. Luis Pereda and Bernini looked at each other and readily admitted the smell of a fight was in the air. Del Solar, however, took advantage of the lull to speak to Flores.
– Drunk to the marrow of their bones, he whispered to him, laughing and indicating the academicians with the corner of his eye.
– Hmm! the taita agreed with a half-smile.
The three scholars sighed with relief, and Del Solar used the favourable turn of events to get the taita back into the mood of tradition.
– You knew the good times, he said. You should see the malevos nowadays!
– I’ve seen them, sneered the taita, curling his lip.
– Ever had a fight with those young punks? asked Bernini.
– Fight? Flores said with acid humour. They crap themselves at the sight of the sheath, never mind a knife!
– Just what I thought! exclaimed the pipsqueak admiringly.
The taita perked up a bit and started to tell another story, as though lazily milking the cow of his memory:
– There was that time, in Saavedra . . .
He was interrupted when María Justa Robles burst into the kitchen. She looked deeply concerned as she hurried to her brother.
– She’s come, she whispered in his ear. She wants to talk to you.
– Who? Juan José drawled.
– La Beba.
The hated name provoked nary a twitch in his face, nor glint in his eye.
– Aha, he murmured. Fine and dandy.
He gave Balín, still gnawing at his shoe, a gentle kick, and the puppy scurried off yelping to hide in the box the taita was sitting upon; safe inside, the puppy continued to mewl. Juan José then did something that amazed the heterodox academicians: against all expectation, the vegetal specimen got to his feet, very slowly, seemingly afraid of falling apart. With no hint of emotion in his greenish, mossy face, he hazarded one, two, three steps toward the kitchen door. Four pairs of eyes watched in consternation as he made his incredible exit. María Justa, looking worried, followed him out.
Conflicting feelings assailed Juan José Robles as he left the kitchen. Hatred and tenderness, severity and mercy were duking it out in his unfathomable malevo heart as he thought about that lawless sister who was coming back, as always, to the smell of a corpse. The tumult in his soul brimmed over at last when he spied her standing at the street door. La Beba was waiting for him, stock still at the threshold, her eyes painfully wide open. Juan José slackened his pace, wanting to get his own head straight before facing the woman. But his slow gait looked to Babe Robles like the extremely deliberate and ominous advance of a judge.
There she stood in front of the big old family home. It looked inaccessible to her, closed, like a fist about to fall. Her heels felt scorched by the doorstep, as if the marble were made of live embers. Doors and windows flew open, it seemed to her, like mouths spewing curses. The neighbours on the patio and a few anonymous faces lurking in ambush studied her with surprise and hostility. Juan José, flanked by María Justa, seemed to become eternal on the long road to the door. La Beba tried to escape the opprobrium of so many gazes by raising hers aloft, only to see the sky stare down at her with a thousand hard eyes.
Bell, little bell,
laugh, laugh, don’t cry.12
Your story was fit for the lyrics of a tango, it blossomed in the intricate arpeggios of the ban
doneón, became legendary in the plangent voices of malevos howling their melancholy to the fiery sunsets in the barrio Villa Ortúzar! Yesterday, your fifteen springtimes were a floral bouquet, your short little skirt and your sunlit braids set off wild conflagrations in the neighbourhood’s sensibility; coach drivers sighed for you as they headed evening-ward, a carnation in their ear and a brawl in their heart. Yesterday, at dances on the patio, at the hour when night seems to spring directly from the body of a guitar, the twinkle in your eye and the swing of your hips slowly unsheathed passion, lust, ferocity – daggers quick to jump at a challenge. Yesterday, your image lightened the dead hours of lumberyards, and haunted the silence of phantasmal general stores, when a hand of truco would suddenly die on the table, impaled by a listless ace of spades.13
It was the mad passion for Downtown, for the City at night when she sings her dangerous siren song! The neighbourhood you abandoned was like a desert. Two good souls there put away your fine cotton dresses and buried your childlike laugh at the foot of a fig tree that still weeps. What became of your life then, Cascabel, Cascabelito? You blindly swirled around cursèd lights that quickly burned your wings, in the sordid cabaret that at midnight stumbles like a drunk to the strains of a squeezebox and violins blacker than grief. Cascabel, Cascabelito! Now you are a chiffon flower (brilliant, yes, but without sap), an adornment for a day of luxury in the useless existence of magnates. Now, in the late afternoon of Florida Street, with your provocative gait, your satin rustle, the wake of your perfume, you make teenage boys tremble in anguish and you dig a painful spur into the morose secret of lonely men.
Tomorrow, when your springtime collapses like the architecture of a flower, when all eyes turn away from you and no one smiles, when happy nights turn their back on you and music kicks you out of its crazy domain, then will you go back to the suburb, on an afternoon smelling like stagnant water, and your steps echoing down the street will awaken memories, stir up ghosts. And when at last the rain descends from your eyes, a girl’s voice from some patio will sing:
Bell, little bell,
laugh, laugh, don’t cry.
Juan José came to a halt in front of La Beba and stood staring at her, perplexed, still trying to resolve his inner conflict. As thoughtful as ever, María Justa Robles had overtaken him, and her charitable arm was already around the waist of her guilty sister. The neighbourhood men on the patio watched the silent scene with bated breath, fearful of its outcome. Truth was, Juan José Robles, indecisive before the woman waiting with downcast eyes, didn’t know whether to clobber her one, just like that, or show her the door and send her back into the night she’d emerged from. But when he saw her so humiliated, so broken down and alone, his suburban heart began to melt like frost under the sun. And so when La Beba dared to look him in the face, Juan José Robles gave in and held out his hand with a simplicity that must surely have had the angels sobbing.14
– Come on in, then, he said softly. The old man’s over there.
A flash of the sublime shook the three neighbourhood men on the patio.
– Good, Ramírez approved. No matter what they say, that Juan José is a real man.
– The poor dear! murmured old man Reynoso.
– It’s not her fault, rebuked Zanetti. I blame Society!
Supported by brother and sister, La Beba walked into the funeral chamber. The first thing she saw was Doña Carmen’s wizened face. She was beside the casket with the rosary in her hand, extending the bridge of her kind smile.
– Doña Carmen! she sobbed, running to the old woman.
Doña Carmen received her with open arms and planted a firm kiss on her teary face.
– Yes, yes, my child, she soothed her. There there, my child, there there.
Next, the old woman took her by the hand and led her to the head of the coffin. Once there, La Beba stood still as a statue. She could not, would not, tear her eyes away from the face that had been extinguished forever. A thousand memories, both pleasant and shameful, tumbled through her mind, pushing and shoving and fighting with one another. At a given moment, her conscience quailed in panic before her sheer nakedness, and La Beba felt a sound, half cry, half sob, rising from her heart into her throat. But she choked it back by biting on her handkerchief, lest she importune the others with a fit of grief that for her was illicit. Not daring to console her sister in words, María Justa caressed her shoulders. Juan José looked away, perhaps to avoid betraying his own emotions. Meanwhile, Doña Carmen had rejoined her two friends.
– Poor soul! she said, indicating La Beba.
– Her repentance is sincere, Doña Martina admitted drily.
– What? grunted Doña Carmen, indignant at that obvious attempt to bargain her down. A heart of gold, Doña Martina, a heart of gold!
She was just getting launched on an eloquent panegyric to La Beba, when a sound from the other room cut her off in mid-sentence, tinged María Justa’s face with worry, and furrowed Juan José’s brow.
– Márgara! whispered Doña Carmen into the attentive ear of Doña Martina.
News of La Beba’s return and her presence in the funeral chamber had leaked into the other room, where the chorus, from the shadows, was watching every detail of Márgara’s portentous grief: sibilant threats, exhortations to clemency, rancorous proverbs and wise aphorisms, all boiled and bubbled in the patter of the chorus. Putting together bits and pieces from their buzz, Márgara had caught wind of something and suddenly sat bolt upright.
– Is she back? she asked the two neighbour ladies, staring at them with haggard eyes.
The Ladies in Red and in Blue dared not deny it, and lowered their brows under the terrible gaze. Their gesture told Márgara everything, and she started tearing at her hair.
– I don’t want her here! she screamed furiously.
– Calm down, calm down, suggested Doña Tecla.
But Márgara shook her tragic Gorgonian head.
– She killed my father! she yelled. I don’t want her here!
The figure of Juan José suddenly cut into the scene. Grimacing in anger, he turned to Márgara.
– Be quiet! he ordered. What’s all the shouting about!
Márgara’s breath went cold in her throat. Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened in fear, and she stared for a long moment at her brother. Then she fell back onto the bed, her Medusa curls slithering for an instant on the pillows. Juan José glanced around challengingly at the chorus of onlookers; their clamour toned down to a hum and then petered out altogether. At length, satisfied that order was restored, he turned his back on the scene, crossed the funeral chamber, and went out to the patio.
He exited with his eternal vegetative air, eyes on the ground, feet dragging. Suddenly he stopped. There, on the patio tiles, stood a pair of boots. Juan José looked at their patent leather and their sheepskin uppers, then noticed the bell-bottomed trouser cuffs. His eyes followed a trouser leg up to a short black jacket, then explored further to find a white neckerchief and a face overshadowed by the brim of a grey hat ringed in a black ribbon of mourning. The ghost of a smile began to appear on Juan José’s lips: there before him was the very effigy of the malevo Di Pasquo.
– My sympathies, grunted Di Pasquo, holding out a hand straight as a dagger-thrust.
– Thanks, responded Juan José, impassive.
Seeing that Di Pasquo wasn’t sure which way the wind was blowing, Juan José added:
– Go on in, friend. The men folk’re in the kitchen.
How to convey the excitement, the shivers of pleasure, but also the fresh anxieties that swept through the kitchen when Juan José came back in with the solemn figure of the malevo Di Pasquo in tow? In the first flush of exultation, the criollista scholars Del Solar and Pereda were delighted by the new arrival, anticipating rich observations with respect to the Italic influence on the final generation of malevos. But they quickly recognized the danger of an excessively violent clash between Di Pasquo and the taita Flores. For it was no longer merely
a run-in between two antagonistic characters, but a confrontation of two different schools!
Moreover, it wasn’t exactly an opportune moment. The taita Flores had just swallowed his anger, barely, but not so the pesado Rivera. With every new explosion of hilarity from the heresiarchs, Rivera’s tense silence grew ever more ominous. And it’s fair to say the dissidents showed no sign of reining in their recklessness. Quite the contrary, for they’d taken control of the bottle, thanks to a moment’s distraction on the part of the pesado, and were now multiplying their toasts and outrageous gestures. One among them, however, was no longer laughing. Samuel Tesler (seeing the mists part before him and the open road ahead) must have been ruminating on some obscure scheme, judging by the double line that forked down his brow. With good reason did Pereda and Del Solar fear the storm clouds gathering in the kitchen! But they didn’t realize just how near the tempest was now.
The first indication came when the malevo Di Pasquo, after a general greeting to those in the room, went over to Flores, who stood waiting for him, silent and wary.
– Evenin’, said the malevo, extending his hand to the taita.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 30