Adam Buenosayres: A Novel

by Leopoldo Marechal

  – Seems like the dummy is the government that let them in, concluded the Italian Gasfitter. If you ask me.

  The Galician Conductor had a formidable harangue on the tip of his tongue against dictators, the Mafia in Rosario, and the whole world. His bushy eyebrows were arching as he prepared for debate. Just then the famous door handle turned again. Twenty-two startled eyes took note. The Taciturn Young Man instinctively straightened his tie. And then the door opened – ah, only one leaf of the double door, and slowly! – while Doña Venus, without raising her eyelids, was mechanically singing her pitch:

  – See what a girl is Jova!

  A woman stood outlined in the doorframe. (Step right up, gentlemen! Come see the ancient monster!). Her nakedness had the violence of an insult, scarcely veiled by a maroon negligee enveloping her like a swath of bloody spume. Beneath her mop of hair (blond, brunette, red, who could say?) her lustreless face was a powdered block defined by two violet stains for eyes and a lipstick smile aimed at everyone and no one. Her body secreted a cloying odour of scented wood or rubber, mixed with smells of antiseptic soap and kerosene that wafted through the open doorway into the room.

  The eleven characters stopped talking. One by one, she examined them all and none, she smiled at everybody and nobody, as she slowly pulled up her long indigo stockings. She smiled and spoke to everyone, the beast of a thousand forms and none.

  – How ’bout it, boys? How ’bout it?

  Doña Venus swayed atop her stool.

  – You won’t find another girl like Jova, she purred between sighs.

  – How ’bout it, boys? invited Jova.

  Samuel Tesler was about to pounce on her like a lion, but Franky held him back.

  – Settle down, he told him. Your number hasn’t come up yet.

  Jova laughed. A hot and neutral laugh. Then she insisted, her eyes motioning toward the room partially visible behind her.

  – So? How ’bout it, boys?

  A deep unease settled among the eleven men in the vestibule. The Galician Conductor had a bleak expression on his face, the Syrian Merchant a cruel gleam in his eye. The Gasfitter hung his head like a recently beaten animal. The Mature Gentleman, indifferent, had gone back to his newspaper. Adam and Schultz, Pereda and Bernini, Samuel and Franky, conversed or pretended to, anxious to elude the circular gaze of Jova. In the midst of the ambient tension, the Taciturn Young Man got to his feet and walked stiltedly like a mechanical doll toward Jova. Still smiling at everyone and no one, Jova wrapped a bare arm around his neck and softly pulled him into the room. Behind them, the door began discreetly to close. But before disappearing completely, Jova turned her laughing head to look back at everybody and nobody, to smile for each man and no man – nothingness tricked out as Iris, the shadow of a mystery!

  – “May woman be a passing season in your life,” declared Schultz sententiously in Adam’s ear. (The astrologer’s voice was thick and his head swimming but, as he noted with pride, the excitement in his coarse flesh and bones was not affecting the decorum of his astral body.)

  – Amen! groaned Adam Buenosayres. (And he had told Irma her eyes were like two mornings together; maybe he’d even kissed her. Then he’d seemed to lose this world, only to recover it later, but colder, sadder, as though his soul in its descent had lost the gift of sight, the illuminating grace of things.)

  Meanwhile, with the eclipse of Jova, the men in the vestibule were behaving normally again, except for the Syrian Merchant, apparently absorbed in some dream of sun-bronzed women. But a hard silence had been left in the room that no one dared interrupt. The only sounds were the occasional glug-glug of draining water inside the hermetic chamber, or minute insects tapping against the glass lamp, or Doña Venus’s breathing in her beatific sleep. That’s how matters stood, when out of the blue Samuel Tesler started hooting with laughter, shaking his expressive face back and forth:

  – “How ’bout it, boys,” he laughed. Cripes, as old Ciro would say! This lenocinium is abstract.3 Compared to this joint, Pythagoras’s theorem is an orgy.

  The Gasfitter, who was trying to light an uncooperative half-cigar, stopped in mid-gesture, indifferent to the match burning between thumb and index finger. The Mature Gentleman lowered his newspaper. The Galician Conductor raised his eyebrows. The Merchant, jolted out of his ecstasy, clapped two tiger’s eyes on the philosopher. Then Franky Amundsen looked benevolently around at the men in the vestibule, pleading their indulgence.

  – A great mind! he said, caressing Samuel’s back as though trying to calm down a vexed animal. But he’s the unfortunate victim of alcohol, ataxia of the motor functions, and a case of the clap his grandparents picked up back in the time of the Pharoahs.

  – Too bad! commiserated the Mature Gentleman. And so young!

  – Young? protested Franky. He’s two thousand years old, if he’s a day!

  He turned toward the philosopher and took his head in his heads with the intention of kissing him on the forehead, but pushed him away immediately, as if startled.

  – Brrr! he exclaimed. He’s uglier than ever!

  Truth be told, Samuel’s laughing face was a spectacle in itself. Looking at it, Adam Buenosayres was put in mind of those demons that in cathedrals smirk gleefully beneath the stone heel of a saint. But the philosopher’s laughter was short-lived. Unexpectedly, Samuel adopted a grave demeanour, stood up, and brought his index finger to his lips.

  – Shhh! he said, pointing at the closed door. Silence!

  He staggered over to the door. But Adam and Franky smartly caught up with him and practically dragged him back to his seat.

  – I know her names! yelled Samuel, furiously squirming in Franky’s arms. She’s the whore of the Apocalypse, the most naked among the clothed. In my tribe she was called Lilith.

  – You wouldn’t be confusing her with someone else, would you? Franky asked, without letting go of him.

  At that point, the dormant Doña Venus began muttering a complaint seeming to come from afar.

  – No rough-housing, she whispered. This is a proper establishment.

  The characters in the vestibule exchanged glances, once again amazed by that prodigy of the talking head.

  – Okay! growled Bernini. Is the woman sleeping or not?

  – She sleeps in the saddle, like a cowboy, Pereda answered very calmly. She sleeps mounted on her stool.

  So she did, in fact. Her words having restored order and reconstructed the broken silence, Doña Venus had fallen back into her purring torpor. But all of a sudden, at the sound of steps from inside the room, she blinked eyelids as wrinkled as walnut shells. The door of the room, which no one had yet seen open, swung on its hinges, and out came the Anonymous Lover. Not even looking at him, Doña Venus dropped from her pedestal with gelatinous fluidity, slid over to the main door, drew back the stealthy chain, and opened the frosted-glass street door. The Anonymous Lover, not bothering to pretend he wasn’t in full flight, made his discreetly phantasmal exit. Doña Venus closed the door behind him, secured the chain, planted herself in front of the men, and critically took stock of the situation.

  When standing, Doña Venus displayed an almost perfectly spherical shape, the overflow of her flabby flesh raining down from breasts, abdomen, and buttocks. Her head, in contrast, had a certain refined quality of a rampant animal, embellished by the wonder of her half-white, half-black coiffure. As for her eyes, their long experience was obvious in the way she now studied each of those men who sat slowly ripening under the shrill light between blood-coloured walls. Even more obvious was that Doña Venus’s intelligent eyes had just chosen the Syrian Merchant. Sensing this, he feigned a yawn of indifference and got to his feet. Doña Venus smiled enigmatically and gestured toward the door left open by the Anonymous Lover. The Merchant obeyed the silent order and slipped into the room, closing the door behind him. From the vestibule, they could hear the key turn in the lock. Satisfied, Doña Venus bent over to stroke the belly of her little dog before climbing back aboard
her stool to recover her equilibrium, beatitude, and slumber.

  Franky Amundsen hadn’t missed a single detail of the scene. He turned to the philosopher of Villa Crespo:

  – Most satisfying to observe how much the Terrestrial Venus has modernized her operation. Son of a gun! One on the scaffold and another waiting in the chapel. Now that’s production!

  – Hmm! Samuel responded vaguely.

  – The assembly line, Bernini said with a cynical air. The latest thing from míster Ford.

  Franky nodded, serious and scientific, and solicited the audience’s attention with a gesture:

  – Gentlemen! he began. Who would dare suggest that we are not progressing? Consider this prodigy of technique and be amazed! Mechanical love, in three movements. Speed, comfort, hygiene! Nota bene: at no point in the production process does the hand of man intervene.

  – There’s no other girl like Jova! Doña Venus’s words came sputtering up from profound depths.

  But Franky’s speech didn’t enjoy the success he was hoping for; on the contrary, it exercised the negative virtue of throwing a shadow across everyone’s face. Adam and Schultz were now lowering brows pregnant with melancholy ruminations. Samuel was stammering a sad, drunken soliloquy. The pipsqueak Bernini, indefatigable sociologist, meditated on the sexual problem resulting from a majority of avid men and a minority of inflexible women who found themselves in this mysterious alluvial land. Motionless and silent waited the Conductor and the Gasfitter, the latter moist and tranquil as a vegetable, the former concentrated and rough-edged as a rock. As for the Mature Gentleman, he had evidently not let go of the Martínez murder case; he looked cautiously up from his newspaper at Franky and then back down, as though thinking the young fellow dissimulated splendidly if indeed he was a detective.

  After Franky had run his eyes over each and every one of the expressionless faces, he guessed what was going through the Mature Gentleman’s mind. And so, for the sake of breaking a silence that didn’t agree with his character, he turned to the Mature Gentleman and said:

  – Let’s say it was the Mafia. How did you arrive at that hypothesis?

  The Mature Gentleman drew himself up to his full stature (which wasn’t much):

  – Gut feeling! he exclaimed, at once confused, triumphant, and modest.

  – Bah! scoffed Pereda. The gentleman conducts his investigation like it’s a game of truco.

  – The intuitive method, Franky declared in a protective tone.

  – Not only that, said the Mature Gentleman, miffed by Pereda’s disdainful comment. The circumstances surrounding the crime clearly point to a Mafia job.

  – The deductive method, Franky corrected himself. Yes, it’s a crime with a signature, as we say in the trade. No doubt about it. But tell me, how do you see the chain of events?

  The Mature Gentleman adopted a circumspect air.

  – Same as always, he said. The rancher receives an anonymous message: he has to go to a certain place at a certain time, under threat of death. When he shows up, they kidnap him. They want a huge sum of money, make him sign a cheque, or something along those lines. What happens in the end? The police get wind of it, and the mafiosos get scared and shoot the rancher, and . . .

  – Nothing could be further from the truth! Franky interrupted. That’s where appearances are deceiving.

  – What? asked the Mature Gentleman. Is there another theory?

  Franky gave him a long look of unconcealed harshness.

  – That’s just the point, he said. In the first place, sir, I don’t formulate theories. I, sir, work with magnifying glass in hand.

  – And so? the Mature Gentleman asked again, disconcerted.

  – The rancher, growled Franky, was murdered right in his bedroom. A shot from a pistol with a silencer.

  Adam and Schultz, Pereda and Bernini exchanged furtive glances. The Mature Gentleman’s jaw was hanging open.

  – Impossible! he cried at last. What about the corpse? They found it at an estate.

  – Pure theatre, Franky explained. They got him dressed in the bedroom, and two men carried him out between them, as if he was drunk. A grey Hudson was waiting for them at the corner with the motor running.

  – And the motive for the crime? objected the Mature Gentleman. What could they rob from a dead man?

  Franky hesitated, as though deciding whether or not to divulge information that might breach professional confidentiality.

  – Look, he finally decided. In the rancher’s bedroom there was a Chinese vase from the Sung dynasty. And the vase has disappeared!

  – But the newspapers haven’t even mentioned it! complained the Mature Gentleman.

  – And do you know what was inside the vase? concluded Franky, pregnant with mystery. The Eye of the Buddha – the famous emerald of the Maharaja!

  The duo Pereda-Bernini burst out laughing, and the contagion passed to the duo Schultz-Buenosayres, then got a thunderous response from Franky himself, as well as an echo of solidarity from the Italian Gasfitter. But the Mature Gentleman wasn’t laughing; quite the contrary. Red with embarassment and anger, he was winding up to give this young whippersnapper a piece of his mind. And doubtless he would have done so, if at that very instant Doña Venus, drowsing on her tripod, hadn’t shown signs of agitation:

  – Savages! she spluttered from dreamland. He was in the prime of youth. Death? It’s too good for those sons of bitches! I’d tie them up and turn them over to the young man’s mother and let her scratch their eyes out with her fingernails, or peel them raw, or burn them with matches, nice and slow . . .

  – Holy smokes! murmured Franky. Who the heck could this woman be talking about?

  – I think it’s the mafiosos from Rosario, ventured Pereda.

  – An atrocity! said Doña Venus in hushed tones that trailed off until they died in silent depths. Killing them would be letting them off easy.

  Her voice had been rising and falling like the tide, and it had ebbed again, so normality was re-established in the vestibule. But the astrologer had been very impressed by the ferocity channelled through the medium of Doña Venus.

  – That woman has the soul of an executioner, he recognized. A primitive cruelty. Too bad she isn’t acquainted with Oriental torture techniques!

  – Or those of the American Indians, Bernini one-upped him, not giving an inch in questions of folklore.

  – Bah! Schultz rejoined.

  – Are you familiar with them?

  – No, but I can imagine what they’re like. Raw bestiality, right? Limited to the realm of the physical. In the East they torture on the spiritual or moral plane.

  Bernini smiled condescendingly.

  – Do you know about the camoatí torture?4

  – And you, Schultz retorted. Ever heard of the torture of the Enamoured Odalisque?

  Franky faced the two contenders:

  – How about the Water Drop torture? he suggested mysteriously. Or the Quail Feather torture?

  Between the blood-coloured walls, in the mucilaginous light of the vestibule, under the beetle-browed surveillance of the Conductor, before the benevolent eyes of the Gasfitter and the resentful pomposity of the Mature Gentleman, the depictions by the three specialists made their macabre rounds. The pipsqueak Bernini initiated the series: here is his Prisoner being hoisted up to the highest branches of a gigantic quebracho tree and left to hang there, right beside the round wasps’ nests. The Prisoner is stark naked, and the wasps, still calm, are buzzing around his ears and eyes, up his nose, between his lips. The thing is not to budge! Put up with it! The Prisoner tries to stifle all movement, knowing what kind of torment awaits him. But finally he can stand it no longer; he shudders, he convulses. The wasps go into a frenzy, they attack in swarms, sting him everywhere, and cover him with a thousand small, bloody wounds. Then it’s hours of fever and thirst; the Prisoner becomes delirious, laughs or weeps, chants a war cry or stammers a love song. The long night comes to an end. In the morning the vultures circle
above a bit of tattered flesh dancing in the breeze at the treetop.

  The listeners found Bernini’s description somewhat literary and were quite taken by it. But right away Schultz took his turn to speak. He sketched a more peaceful tableau and immediately won the sympathy of his audience: An Oriental chamber, sumptuous with carpets and incense-burners smoking with aromatic resins. The Prisoner is lying on an ottoman of incalculable worth. Surrounded by opulence, the Prisoner hesitates, doubts, fears. Suddenly the curtain of beads is pulled back, and – wait for it! – in comes the Odalisque, beautiful and agile as an Arabian gazelle. The Odalisque begins her work of seduction, and the Prisoner – ay! – gets caught up in the golden webs she spins. The amorous assaults multiply: the Prisoner believes he is up against one of Mohammed’s houris. Exhausted at last, he would like to sleep. But the Odalisque won’t let him, she extracts from the Prisoner every last drop of his ardour. He passes out, but the Odalisque insists. No response! The Prisoner is asleep. Then two gigantic Ethiopians enter the chamber; they whip the Prisoner with branches of stinging nettle and force him to drink aphrodisiac potions. On and on goes the torment between the Odalisque and the Prisoner, until finally he collapses in a heap among the carpets. The Prisoner dies of love.

  Schultz’s story left his listeners in the vestibule incredulous, a condition the astrologer did his best to overcome with a few wise reflections on love and death. He tried, but did not succeed, because Franky Amundsen was burning with desire to add his two cents’ worth to the literary contest. Pondering the matter deeply, Franky hesitated between the Water Drop torture, which the ferocious Culquelubi inflicted on the ex-Knight Templar in Salgari’s The Philtre of the Caliphs, and the Quail Feather torture suffered by Tickner, Sexton Blake’s young assistant, in the terrifying story of The Blue Fear. Finally he decided on the latter: now the Prisoner is trussed up inside the torture chamber; his tormentor, a grinning Chinese, has just removed his shoes and socks (here, the audience began to smile). What does the Chinese torturer do next? He takes a quail feather and starts tickling the soles of the Prisoner’s feet (the audience’s smile widened). The Prisoner is laughing his head off, he weeps with laughter (frank hilarity among the audience), until finally the joke becomes intolerable. His ears are buzzing, his nerves exploding, and his laughter degenerates into howls and sobs. As a result of the torment, the Prisoner goes mad.