If Schultz’s depiction had provoked resistance, Franky’s unleashed a veritable deluge of objections. The pros and cons of laughter as a means of torture were carefully weighed, until Doña Venus, as comatose as ever, stirred atop her stool and emitted a verdict with no right of appeal:
– Three bullshit artists, she said. That’s what they are: three bullshit artists.
The severity of the judgment flummoxed the three polemicists. Adam Buenosayres and Luis Pereda started laughing. Meanwhile, something began to stir beneath the rock-hard shell within which hunkered the Galician Conductor:
– Torture! he snorted. If you want torture, go to the police. That’s what they know best: how to torture the folks they arrest, trying to force them to confess. And confess they do, whether they’re guilty or not
– Can you swear to that? Franky asked him in an agressive tone.
– Forget wasps and feathers, continued the Conductor, oblivious to Franky. The interrogations go on day and night; they don’t even let them sleep. They twist their victims’ big toe or (pardon my language) their testicles. They feed them anchovies and smoked herring, to get them thirsty, and then they deny them water.
– Barbarians! Doña Venus squawked peacefully.
But the Gasfitter smiled, beaming all over with benevolence.
– Whaddya want! he said. If they don’t lean on ’em, they won’t cough up the goods!
– What about the albas corpus appeal?5 objected the Conductor, his voice pure poison.
Franky started.
– What appeal? he cried, not believing his ears.
– Albas corpus, said the Conductor. That’s the legal way.
Franky turned to the group with consternation.
– Did I hear right? he wondered.
– It’s true what they say, commented Pereda. Every gallego is born with a copy of the Criminal Code in his hand.
Doña Venus turned her sleeping head from side to side:
– Yes, she said. They’re stupid brutes.
Everyone burst out laughing, and the Galician Conductor glowered menacingly. Fortunately, the pipsqueak Bernini, already famous for his powers of observation, explained that Doña Venus, drifting in and out of lethargy, had merely got her timing wrong, and that obviously her insult had not been for the conscientious natives of Galicia,6 but for the police torturers just alluded to by the Conductor himself; and that, crude though her language may have been, it testified to her incommensurable thirst for justice. That elementary interpretation of the facts restored peace to the vestibule, a peace all sensed had been under threat. The Galician Conductor put aside his remaining aggressiveness, and the rest of the party sighed with relief. Just then, the door handle turned again: yes, the door to the anteroom was opening to release the Taciturn Young Man, now rather wilted. No doubt about it, the den of love was heaving him, vomiting him out. The Taciturn Young Man tarried at the threshold and blinked once or twice, as if dazzled by the bloody light in the vestibule. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, and with an unsteady hand he was trying to straighten his dishevelled clothes.
– His nuptial suit, murmured Schultz in a desolate tone.
But the Young Man’s bedazzlement lasted only a moment. Without further delay, like the Anonymous Lover shortly before him, he bolted for the main door held open by Doña Venus and took off for the street, mistrustful and urgent.
– He’s fleeing, Schultz said to his companion Adam Buenosayres.
He was indeed going back into the same night whence he had arrived astride his magic broom. His was a return from a witches’ sabbath, skulking and precipitate, before the cock’s trumpet announced the day.
– An erotic collapse, groaned Adam (and he had told Irma her eyes were like two mornings together . . .).
The chain-lock once again in place, Doña Venus was standing (if such may be said of a sphere) and looking around among the men for someone to replace the ghost who’d just exited through the hallway. Her doubtful eyes fluctuated between the Italian Gasfitter and the Galician Conductor, as though studiously feeling out the maturity of each. She still hadn’t come to a decision when the anteroom door half-opened and Jova’s head appeared, smiling urbi et orbi.
– Boys! clucked the most naked among the bedizened.
Even the Mature Gentleman set eyes on that unexpected puppet’s head. Then Jova, responding to all gazes and none, stuck a mocking tongue out at everyone and no one (a sort of red mollusc between the two valves of her lips), and disappeared instantly, closing the solemn door behind her.
– What a girl is Jova! grumbled Doña Venus between sighs.
When she turned back to the men in the vestibule, her choice had been made. With a slight gesture she got the Galician Conductor to his feet and, with another motion, she pointed him toward the door of the anteroom. The Conductor, more distracted than ever, entered the lair in turn, taking with him the secret of his impenetrable soul. Afterward, Doña Venus walked across the vestibule to the patio and looked out at the sky.
– It’s clouding over, she said. Lousy weather.
She rotated heavily, like a sphere on its polar axis. She saw the Mature Gentleman getting to his feet and she watched as he methodically smoothed out the wrinkles in his suit, folded with great care the pages of his newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and drew back the chain on the door.
– Are you leaving? Doña Venus asked in a honeyed voice.
– It’s getting late, responded the Mature Gentleman.
He opened the main door familiarly, slipped into the hallway, and closed the door behind him. Doña Venus hadn’t taken her eyes off him. All graciousness, she explained:
– An old franelero, the peep-and-go-home type.
Lulu the lapdog growled as though voicing disapproval of the franelero’s desertion. Doña Venus, with difficulty, crouched down and stroked Lulu’s pink belly. Then she got settled again on her stool and, before closing her eyes, murmured:
– A bloody old franelero.
With that laconic epitaph, the story of the Mature Gentleman came to a close. The characters still waiting in the vestibule became aware of their increasing solitude. Indeed, of the brilliant conversationalists gathered round the stool, only the Gasfitter was still there, or at least half there, since for a while now his face had been expressing absence. Moreover, as soon as the woman and her dog closed their eyes, a disturbing silence descended upon the vestibule, broken only by the occasional neighbourhood rooster or the odd earlybird streetcar careening down Canning Street. A silence pregnant with sounds which, though still proper to the realm of night, announced dawn’s imminence: sounds that acquire a recriminatory accent in the ears of those who have abused the night. The new circumstances helped improve the tone among the men remaining there under the bloody light. And Samuel Tesler had the honour of steering the conversation in a nobler, altruistic direction. The philosopher was emerging from his abundantly fluvial drunkenness, not yet with a specific thought in mind, but moved rather by a kind of vague desperation that found an outlet in eloquent gesticulations and ominous groans.
– Where is it all going to end? he burst out at last, a single gesture of his hand taking in the vestibule, the building, perhaps the world.
A macabre chortle escaped his lips.
– Human dignity! he lamented. How nauseating!
– There are two forms of prostitution, Bernini intervened. Legal and clandestine. Here we have . . .
– Go to the Devil! cried Samuel Tesler. They’re just two scientific names for the same ignominy!
Schultz leaned over to a Buenosayres lost in thought.
– The Jew is showing his true colours, he whispered. Now we’re in for some moral whining.7
– Mea culpa, groaned a laconic Buenosayres.
But Bernini was warming to his theme.
– It may be ignominious, he said, but it’s a necessary ignominy. I’d like to know what would become of us without this ignominy!
The talking he
ad of Doña Venus spun around to face the conversationalists.
– That’s mother of all questions, she croaked mechanically.
– Hmm, Adam observed. Is there such a thing as a necessary ignominy?
The pipsqueak Bernini stared at him in amazement. Then, in a truly overwhelming display of statistics, he spoke of the phalanx of foreign men who had brought with them not only their useful labour, but also their dangerous soledad, their solitude, and their soltería, their bachelorhood (and here Bernini underlined the common etymology of the Spanish words soledad and soltería).8 He painted the bleakest view of the dangers facing society due to that mob of single expatriate men. As the peroration of the impassioned sociologist unfolded, the abominable spectres of adultery, rape, and child molestation went filing by in martial order. But then he evoked those “safety valves” that certain retrograde minds had just now dismissed as ignominious; he sang the praises of those humble institutions, such as the very one in which they now found themselves, which anonymously fulfilled a mission as indispensable as it was secret. Instantly, the abominable figures of adultery, rape, and child molestation fled with their tails between their legs, and society under siege could breathe easy again.
One might have expected thunderous applause to greet the discourse of the sociologist Bernini. But it did not turn out that way. Adam Buenosayres condemned it from beginning to end. Samuel, the philosopher, unexpectedly relapsed into Dionysian mode and celebrated the end of the speech with a gush of laughter that elicited loud imitations in the vestibule. However, the talking head hadn’t yet given her verdict:
– That dwarf does have the gift of the gab, Doña Venus pronounced mellifluously. Given half a chance, he’d talk his way past the hangman.
The oracle’s words provoked a new round of hilarity, which the pipsqueak Bernini faced down with dignity. He decided to play his best card and go for broke: he spoke of untutored youths, of the aberrations in adolescents due to inadequate sex education; he spoke of the youthful Argentine Republic and of the sacred virility of her sons. Just when everyone saw a pall being cast over the august horizon of the homeland, Bernini let the sun shine once again by pulling out his famous “safety valves.” It must be owned that, when he mentioned them for the second time, the pipsqueak unleashed a hurricane of laughter so violent that it wrinkled the brow of Doña Venus and knocked the Gasfitter out of his ecstasy.
A matter of such vast ramifications could not, of course, leave Franky Amundsen indifferent. Once the laughter had calmed down, Franky very gravely enquired of the scholars surrounding him if Schultz’s neocriollo angels (the same ones who had brought us the legion of single men just mentioned by Bernini) had likewise guided to our shores the legion of adorable Jovas, Fannys, and Suzettes who one fine day had blithely set out on the Road to Buenos Aires. At Franky’s words, many eyes flashed with hostility. In vain did Doña Venus wake up to swear that Jova had no equal in this world. In vain did Schultz deplore the inglorious role that certain perverse imaginations attributed to his angels. For nothing could prevent Adam, Pereda, and Bernini from recalling the name of that perfidious Frenchman, Albert Londres, who with his equally perfidious slander had tried to besmirch Argentine honour.9
– Those caftens are all from Marseilles! thundered Pereda, swearing he’d seen loads of them in brothels, with their bowler hats, Mediterranean mustaches, and heavy gold chains.
– They’re Pollacks! cried Bernini just as vigorously.
– Romanians! Adam affirmed categorically.
The question still hadn’t been resolved when the pythoness of the vestibule stirred again on her stool, a sure sign she was about to deliver a great revelation. Given her indisputable authority on the subject, everyone listened with keen interest.
– They come in all kinds, like at the five-and-dime store, Doña Venus whispered at last.
Having delivered her final verdict, she promptly woke up and slid over to the main door to let out the Syrian Merchant who, fleeing, was as despondent as a beat-up fighting cock. The Italian Gasfitter, without waiting to be invited, walked dreamily over and let himself into the room just vacated by the Merchant. Doña Venus approved his move with a slight nod and went back to her stool.
The Gasfitter’s departure allowed our men in the vestibule to bask in an intimacy that gave greater freedom to their words and movements. Few sounds penetrated that silent space – the neighbourhood rooster multiplying his shrieks, as if maddened by the sense of dawn’s approach; a grocer’s cart rattling lazily down the street to the rhythmic clip-clop of horseshoes. It was the hour when nocturnal souls, overcome by remorse, grow swollen with generous intentions and pledge their word of honour to the future. In this atmosphere favourable to all redemptions, Adam Buenosayres launched the final theme: of course this ignominy wasn’t necessary, and it was only the total lack of colonizing spirit that was responsible for the concentration of three million people on the banks of the Río de la Plata, while fertile plains and sylvan valleys were left unpopulated. And so? Was all lost, then? No! Adam Buenosayres gathered up all those “men in solitude”10 mentioned by Bernini; he joined them in Christian matrimony with vigorous women; he said unto them, “Multiply and fill the earth”; he scattered them like seed from north to south, from east to west. And then, before the wonderstruck gaze of his listeners, a race of shepherds and ploughmen, innumerable as the sands of the sea, covered the Argentine pampas all the way down to Cape Horn. They built amazing cities, peopled the sea with ships and the sky with aircraft, sang epics as yet unheard, and thought up superb metaphysical systems.
The vision sent the characters of the vestibule into ecstasy. The philosopher Tesler averred that a grand pastoral freshness was washing over him. Faithful to himself, Schultz proposed a few ethnic combinations (Spanish men with Tartar women, Englishwomen with Chinese men, Italian men with Esquimo women) which would bring about the lineage destined, so he affirmed, to find its quintessence in the Neocriollo. Pereda gravely endorsed the vision, and even the pipsqueak Bernini, beneath his tough scientific shell, was almost-sort-of moved by it. Alas! Among those zealous settlers, only Franky Amundsen maintained a reserved and almost hostile attitude! When the others called him on this, he retreated into a silence full of reticence, but eventually agreed in principle to the general idea of settlement. After more supplications and hesitations, Franky ended up insinuating that he would join the legion of men and women convoked by Adam Buenosayres. Nevertheless, given that he was not a reckless lyrical type, but a man of action with his feet firmly on the ground, Franky Amundsen imposed a condition without which he reckoned they wouldn’t get anywhere.
– What condition? several voices asked him.
– That polygamy be re-established, Franky answered in a pious tone.
And he added euphorically:
– What the heck! The Republic needs a hundred million inhabitants, and we’ll provide them!
Franky’s motion was fervently endorsed by some, but provoked vague protests from others. Samuel Tesler leapt to his feet:
– Yes! he cried. Polygamy, like in the Old Testament!
Radiant, sublime, his mouth malignant and his eyes flashing, the philosopher of Villa Crespo initiated his final ballet. With one hand on his hip and the other fluttering in the air, he slowly pirouetted along the vestibule, at once grotesque and rhythmic, a dancing gargoyle.
– The phylogenetic dance! cried Franky, applauding furiously.
Doña Venus woke up with a start:
– No horse-play, she said. This is a decent establishment.
But Samuel Tesler had concluded the first figure of his dance and was launching into the second with a lively display of footwork that captivated the onlookers. So Doña Venus slid off her tripod like a ball of gelatine, stood up, and made for the philosopher:
– Shhh! she ordered him. That’s enough!
In vain! A furious maenad, a gargoyle gone crazy, Samuel began to dance circles around Doña Venus, enclosing her in an orbit of
leaps, pirouettes, and contortions. Doña Venus, sphere of fat, began to rotate awkwardly on her own axis, trying to face the dancing demon who was circumscribing her ever more closely. Meanwhile, from her post on the cushion, Lulu kept up a steady stream of yapping as shrill as broken glass.
– Hoodlums! Doña Venus panted. Get out!
She lunged for the main door, jerked back the chain to open it, then turned to the assembled company who were already on their feet:
– Out! she shouted. Get out of here!
– It’s not such a big deal, Franky told her in a conciliatory tone.
He tried to stroke her round double chin. But Doña Venus deflected the hand that dared such impudence. And so Franky studied the woman in her entire volume. Finally deciding on the right spot, he smiled benevolently and gave her backside a resounding slap.
– Police! shrieked Doña Venus. Police!
She hiked up her skirt, exhibiting a repulsively fat thigh, then pulled from her stocking a metal whistle and started blowing on it for all she was worth. Little Lulu chimed in, croaking and wheezing as if in her death throes. And Jova, now out in the vestibule, added her cackle to the chorus as she asked in alarm: “What’s up? What’s going on?” It was time to make themselves scarce, and the men bolted down the hallway and out to the street. Schultz, Franky, Pereda, and Bernini took off to the right, toward Triunvirato Street. Adam ran after the philosopher of Villa Crespo, who had gone to the left and was running hell bent in headlong flight.
Chapter 3
He caught up with him only a hundred yards up the street, for the philosopher, after tearing full speed across the dangerously exposed intersection at Camargo Street, had finally stopped and was waiting in the deep shadows that the trees, under the glare of the lights, cast upon the sidewalk. Adam Buenosayres, in flight as well, found Samuel sitting on a doorstep, his gnomish legs ridiculously shrunken and his cyclopean thorax heaving and wheezing audibly.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 36