(Schultz prepares to answer, but loud voices coming from the other sector cut him off.)
BERNINI
(Shouting at the top of his lungs from the other table.)
Hey, you guys! Come here, all of you!
PEREDA
(Shouts back.)
What’s up?
BERNINI
They’re gonna have it out!
PEREDA
Who?
BERNINI
The payador Tissone and Franky!
The incident had occurred when The Bohemians had finished their number. In the silence following the applause, the payador Amundsen, eyes sparkling, fiendishly challenged the payador Tissone. Tissone blanched under the pressure of everyone staring at him and waiting for his response. A wave of courage rushed through him, and he cried in a sublime tone:
– I’m called to my game!
The conditions of the contest were set out forthwith. The payador Amundsen was to put a difficult question to the payador Tissone, who then had to answer to the best of his ability. Tissone would accompany himself on his own guitar, whereas the payador Amundsen, whose fingers weren’t in shape that night, would be accompanied by one of the three Bohemians. Those listening were duly constituted into a Jury that would decide who was the champion. No betting was allowed; as Franky pointed out with dignity, this was no cockfight or boxing match; it was a first-class criollo competition.
When Luis Pereda, Ciro Rossini, the astrologer Schultz, and Adam Buenosayres arrived at the arena, the tableau laid out before their gaze was impressive. The two contenders sat face to face, serious and dignified as befitted the occasion. The payador Amundsen, his finger on his temple, was listening very attentively as his accompanist rehearsed the few bars of music to which Amundsen was to set words when it was his turn to sing. He was flanked by the pipsqueak Bernini and a second Bohemian, the two patting him on the back and cheering him on with words of unconditional devotion. Samuel Tesler, Prince Charming, and the third Bohemian were with the payador Tissone, who sat holding his guitar, oblivious to everything, even Samuel Tesler’s supposedly confidential offer to place his wisdom at the payador’s disposal, if Franky’s question – hollered Samuel thick-tongued – got him into a tight spot.
Stalling for time, Franky Amundsen, the centre of everyone’s expectation, turned to the payador Tissone and said:
– Don’t crap out on me, pard.
– Don’t you fret none, Tissone drawled back, with a stolidity revealing of his mettle.
There were a few more seconds of silence. All of a sudden, Franky’s face lit up and an ineffable smile dawned on his lips.
– Here goes! he said.
His guitarist strummed furiously, and Franky addressed the following ditty to his opponent:
My countryman Don Tissone,
if you really know what’s right,
then tell me, your humble servant:
Why does the seagull shit white?14
The listeners exclaimed in amazement and exchanged knowing looks, for Franky’s question was a tough one probing the most arcane depths of nature. The payador Tissone looked profoundly shaken.
– That’s one killer question! said Bernini.
– It’d stump the devil himself, opined one of the Bohemians.
But the payador Tissone quickly shook off his paralysis, settled the guitar on his thigh, and with lithe fingers played a long warm-up. Finally, he opened his mouth; everyone held their breath in suspense. Alas! Not a peep issued from his lips! The listeners exchanged looks. His forehead shiny with sweat, Tissone played his lead-in again, got to where the song starts, and opened his mouth. And again, silence. A dull murmur stirred among the contest’s witnesses. They were about to count him out. Franky was smiling, already certain of his victory. Samuel hung his head as though insufferably humiliated. But wait! Once more, the payador Tissone has thrashed out his introductory riffs; in desperation he looks straight at Franky Amundsen and sings his answer:
White shits the seagull-seagull,
like the payador said so true
because, sure ’nuff, it don’t know
how to shit in no other hue.15
The ghost errant of Santos Vega! Musical shade of the gaucho Martín Fierro! Southern troubadours, glorious souls of yesteryear, whose bones today lie beneath the pampa, mother of guitar-toting centaurs! I have seen you come down to succour the payador Tissone and crown him with victory; and I have seen how the payador’s brow lowered beneath the weight of so many laurel leaves. The listeners went wild in adulation. Franky Amundsen ardently embraced Tissone, crying out the enormity of his defeat. As the others took turns hugging the winner, Samuel Tesler publicly forswore the erudite science he’d professed heretofore and announced that henceforth he would heed only the voices of the gnomic wisdom infused in humble folk by decree of the lofty and very occult Tetragrammaton.
That moment marked the apogee of the banquet and signalled the beginning of the end. The great Ciro understood this, first when he noticed the commensals lapsing into silent lassitude, and again as he watched the funereal waiter take away the leftovers from the feast (greasy plates, gaunt bottles, glasses grimy with fingerprints), and yet again when the musicians packed up their instruments. At last, everyone stood up. Goodbye was now in the air, and Ciro Rossini grew gloomy once more.
– Diavolo!
They took their leave at the big front door of the gazebo, the blustery wind whipping the trees out in the street. The first to go, heading westward, was Prince Charming, cold and cranky, perhaps ruminating a long diatribe against magnates. The three Bohemians said their goodbyes as they took off running to catch a Lacroze streetcar tottering in the direction of La Chacarita. Lastly, the payador Tissone weighed anchor; many fond eyes followed him as the night swallowed him up, guitar and all.
– Poor guys! commented Ciro. The gazebo’s over for them.
But the great Ciro’s melancholy reached its extreme when he felt Adam Buenosayres’s hands take his own. Moved to the depths of his being, he embraced the poet of Villa Crespo, then the rest of his party, clinging to each man like a shipwrecked sailor to a plank.
– Giovinezza! he wept. Addio, addio!
The group finally tore itself away from the emotional goodbye scene and set off staggering down the street. At the corner of Triunvirato and Gurruchaga, they stopped, not knowing where to go next. The autumn night offered herself naked and full of dark possibilities; the mad wind seemed to bid them join a witches’ sabbath; everything was inciting them to furtive, guilty acts. As his companions were deliberating, Adam heard the bells of San Bernardo ring two-thirty in the morning; up on the bell tower, the yellow clock looked like a dead man’s face. Time to go home? Then Samuel Tesler, his steps unsteady since leaving the gazebo, whispered a few secretive words into Franky Amundsen’s ear.
– Libidinous Israelite! exclaimed Franky, covering his ears as though scandalized.
– It’s the Terrestrial Venus! Samuel insinuated in a persuasive tone. The demonic or popular Venus!
– What are you guys getting up to over there? asked Luis Pereda.
Franky pointed an accusing finger at Tesler.
– It’s the philosopher, he said. He wants to throw all decency overboard.
Nevertheless, he publicly revealed Samuel’s designs, and since no one found them outrageous, the pipsqueak Bernini gave the marching order.
– To Canning Street! he ordered mysteriously.
Still hesitant, Adam Buenosayres looked again at the phantasmagorical clock of San Bernardo. Then he looked down Gurruchaga, the empty street that led homeward. He thought of the work waiting for him in his torture chamber, under the cursèd lamp and the stupidly familiar objects. A shiver of terror sent him back to the drunken party, the ship of fools on which he’d come sailing:
– Absurd night! he cried yet again in his soul. Night of mine!
He set off with the rest of them, as though in flight from himself.
C
hapter 2
Step right up, gentlemen! Come and see the ancient monster, the beast of a thousand shapes and none, whose poverty is equalled by her sumptuousness, dressed in all the world’s finery, the most bedizened among the naked, the most naked of the bedizened, nothingness tricked out as Iris, the shadow of a mystery! Before your dazzled eyes She may appear as something firm and strong: fortress or barbican, bastion or battlement, rock or metal. But look out! Nothing is as frail as She, nothing crumbles as easily as her gaudy edifice of spume. Or perhaps you believe that She is fragile, and her very fragility invites you to make lyrical comparisons. But watch out! For you will find nothing so resistant to violence and punishment, nothing so strong as She when it comes to the rigour of battle. To be sure, you will see her surround herself in mystery, disguise herself as an enigma, and wrap herself entirely in tulle, wishing to be impenetrable to your gaze. But wise up! In her very eagerness to appear mysterious, it’s easy to see that no creature is more devoid of mystery. And now, gentlemen, come see the ancient deity, the one of a thousand barbarous names, the never-profaned goddess! Come right in, gentlemen! Shhh!
Someone on the other side had just turned the door handle. The eleven characters in the vestibule suddenly stopped talking and fixed their eyes on the closed door. Doña Venus herself, snoozing atop her stool, opened her right eye to take a look:
– See what a girl is Jova! she whined without enthusiasm. Look what a girl!
The door, however, did not open. The men in the vestibule relaxed their vigilance. But first they heard tinkling laughter in the room behind the door, a warm trill as old as the world.
– Will that woman never come out? protested the philosopher Tesler, grimacing like an obscene gargoyle.
Franky gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
– Calm down, beast! he said. You’ll get your ration of meat.
The vestibule was narrow; the eleven characters (as well as Doña Venus and her lapdog Lulu, curled up beside her) filled it completely. They sat in the following order. On the left, against the blood-coloured wall, several contradictory figures sat on a bench directly facing the anteroom whose door handle had just turned: the Syrian Merchant, the Galician Conductor, the Italian Gasfitter, and the Mature Gentleman. At the back, against a wrought-iron-and-glass partition separating the vestibule from the patio, were seated Luis Pereda, the pipsqueak Bernini, Franky Amundsen, and the philosopher Tesler, all of whom were able to keep an eye on two doors. One of these led to the room adjoining the anteroom; to one side of this door sat Doña Venus, sleeping with one eye ajar. The other was the frosted-glass inner door that allowed ingress from the street, once its security chain had been stealthily slid open. Between the glass partition and the bloody wall, a nook opened out; that was where Adam Buenosayres, the astrologer Schultz, and the Taciturn Young Man were sitting in Vienna chairs. Light from an electric bulb smeared the walls, glared off the window panes in the partition, and cruelly illuminated those twelve human faces, revealing them with the brutality of a mug shot. Aside from the expectancy prevailing in the vestibule and the mysteries apparently being celebrated in the hermetic room and anteroom, there were no other signs of life in the rambling old house, as though silence and night were its only tenants.
Among the eleven personages who had glanced at the door, only the Taciturn Young Man was still staring at the door handle, seemingly abstracted from his surroundings. His extravagantly slicked-back hair, his ceremonious necktie, his gleaming patent leather shoes, the razor-sharp crease of his trousers, everything in his attire appeared to conform to a liturgical order. Adam Buenosayres, who had been studying him with interest, whispered these observations into the ear of the astrologer.
– His nuptial suit, Schultz responded in a low voice.
– What? Adam was astonished. Do you really think so?
– If I’m not mistaken, said Schultz, that boy will be the next to pay homage to the beast.
– It’s his turn, Adam admitted. But the bit about the suit is impossible. It would be monstrous.
– Study him closely, replied Schultz, glancing furtively at the Taciturn Young Man. For half an hour now that boy has been an architect.
– An architect?
– That’s right, insisted Schultz bitterly. And do you know what the architect is constructing now? A phantasm.
– An ideal construction?
– Listen carefully, assented Schultz. I haven’t seen the woman who is officiating behind that door; nor has he, in all likelihood. But believe me, when that lad goes in there, he will be wed to a phantasm.
Adam Buenosayres remained silent, and the image of Solveig Amundsen crossed his mind. “Yes, the fragile clay of a subtle architecture, or the raw material of a dream.” Instinctively, his hand went to the Blue-Bound Notebook, but he drew it back right away. “Not now, later! It will be an opulent wake. The poetic death of a phantasm.”
– Possibly, he answered at last, without looking at the astrologer.
– Pure metaphysics, Schultz corrected him severely.
The Mature Gentleman, meanwhile, had been devouring his newspaper. Now he raised a venerable white head, two chubby pink cheeks, and a nose straddled precariously by a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles. He was the only one among the men in the vestibule who looked absolutely natural, at ease, at home – all he was missing to be completely in character were his slippers and robe de chambre.
– Just as I thought! he exclaimed, jabbing a finger at a headline in his newpaper.
Everyone, except the sleeping Doña Venus and the dreaming Taciturn Young Man, turned to stare at the Mature Gentleman.
– The murder of the rancher Martínez? asked Franky.
– Kidnapping and murder, corrected the Mature Gentleman. I was right when I said the Mafia in Rosario was behind it.
– Bad people, opined the Syrian Merchant, smiling with Asian ferocity. His eyes glinted beneath the brim of his pearl-grey Stetson; a stiff collar and a red tie were nearly strangling him around the neck. His get-up was completed by a green Perramus coat1 and shiny colt-leather boots, and the Merchant looked as though he couldn’t be more comfortable inside a torture machine. “His nuptial suit,” Adam Buenosayres thought uneasily.
Very excited now, the Mature Gentleman was playing detective, authoritatively brandishing his newspaper. All those flashy crimes, macabre headlines, photographs of cadavers in supine or lateral position lent a touch of heroic colour, yes, to his drab, insignificant existence.
– Think about it, he explained. The method of the crime is obvious: first the rancher disappears, the investigation yields nothing, the police are disoriented. Then the corpse turns up in a field, shot through the head! It’s as clear as day!
– What are you implying? Franky asked him in a severe tone.
– The Mafia! whispered the Mature Gentleman confidentially. And the police are in the dark!
Franky stared hard at him. Contemplating the Gentleman, Franky was torn by conflicting thoughts. He couldn’t decide whether to go and kiss the old man’s chubby cheeks or thump him one on his shiny pate. But finally he opted for a third plan: he knitted his brow and pulled a sombre face.
– Choose your words carefully! he threatened. Are you sure about what you’re saying?
Amid the general surprise, the Mature Gentleman paled visibly, overcome by a suspicion – could this young fellow be from the Secreta? He struggled for words under Franky’s ruthless stare. About to respond, he was interrupted by a monotonous, ghostly, incredible voice, issuing from a quarter no one would have suspected. How was it possible? For it was beyond doubt that Doña Venus was sleeping, with her two hundred pounds of fat well stacked upon her stool. Her eyelids closed, nothing budged in her mask of wrinkles and flaking rouge, and her head looked like plaster under a light that revelled in displaying her bizarre hair, parted down the middle into two bands, one snow-white and the other as black as the raven’s wing. Doña Venus was indeed sleeping! And yet, she was also saying
something in a voice seemingly from another world.
At the sound of that voice, the lapdog Lulu woke up and lifted her head, her little eyes dripping rheum.
– It was a ranch-hand, Doña Venus mumbled in the manner of a medium. One of the hired hands at Los Horcones. The owner had fired him. Yes, yes. It was a revenge killing.
Everyone was left speechless by the verdict Doña Venus had pronounced from her stool like the oracle of Delphi from her ritual tripod. But the Mature Gentleman was not long in taking up the gauntlet.
– False hypothesis, he shot back. An old story.
Then he added, waving his newspaper at her:
– Have you read this?
He was answered by a euphonious snore; Doña Venus had sunk back into the depths of lethargy. Lulu followed her example, curling up on her cushion upholstered in ticking.
The Mature Gentleman then turned to Franky.
– And what do you think, sir? he queried, both wary and friendly (could the young fellow be from the Secreta?). Myself, I think the Mafia . . .
– Hmm! growled Franky in a reserved tone, feeling under his left armpit for an imaginary revolver.
That was when the Galician Conductor spoke up. A dour man wearing an oilskin cap, a leather jacket, and a red scarf, he was obviously fed up to the teeth.
– Those Italian mobsters, he groused. Cowardly murderers, that’s what they are!
– Bad people, repeated the Syrian Merchant.
The Galician Conductor looked askance at the Italian Gasfitter, who sat beside him listening placidly, wearing a blue overall with the monogram CPG stitched in red.2
– It’s that Mussolini’s fault, the Conductor cursed. He kicked them out of Italy, and now we’ve got them here! Just look what dictators can do.
Smiling and timid at the same time, the Gasfitter scratched his head.
– If they were mafiosos he did good, he argued, gesturing profusely. Seems like the dummy isn’t Mussolini, if you ask me.
– He should have kept them! shot back the Conductor, sour as vinegar.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 34