“Which was leading him to so sorry a pass . . .”
Chapter 2
– You, Mother! Are you aware of the responsibility you bear for your Son, who is soon to enter the stormy fray of life, with no other spiritual or moral arms than the ones forged in the home? Home, I said. Sacred word! Mother, have you reflected upon the dangers lying in wait for your child if he’s left exposed to the temptations of the street, which looks to be the case?
The Principal waits for an answer, his little eyes radiating severity and reproach. His voice is mellifluous, even though his earthen complexion, his sharply defined features, his rustic torso, and a viscous melancholy oozing from him like resin from a tree all reveal him to be an authentic son of Saturn. He wears – and swears by – a greenish-skyblue-grey suit, with spongy tones and rare glints of indigo, astonishing colours which, according to the scholar Di Fiore, could be produced only in the workshop of the great outdoors, or in one governed by the most niggardly economy. Nonetheless, his outfit is brightened by three vehement notes: a shirt the colour of magpie vomit (Adam Buenosayres’s definition), a frenetically green bow tie, and boots of hallucinatory yellow.
– Answer, Mother! insists the Principal, getting pedagogically vexed.
But the woman takes refuge in a seamless, humble, vegetable silence. She stands with her arms curved round her belly and her eyes in thrall to those magic, hypnotic boots. To be sure, her mind floats intact on the surface of the Principal’s speech, which she doesn’t understand and never will.
– She won’t cry, whispers Quiroga, the teacher from San Luis de la Punta de los Venados.1 He’s standing beside the large window in the Principal’s office with some fellow teachers – Adam Buenosayres, Fats Henríquez, and Di Fiore. Outside the window the sky is grey and pregnant with rain.
Fats Henríquez, embalmer of birds, fixes his cold, Anubis-like gaze on the Mother.
– Hard as a rock, he says at last, turning to look at a dead swallow lying in the palm of his hand.
– She’d be better off crying and getting it over with! Adam Buenosayres mutters between his teeth. The poor thing would spare herself the rest of the damn speech and give Pestalozzi2 his first-degree satisfaction. Second-degree satisfaction is when the kid starts crying because his mother is crying. The third degree is the crowning touch, when Pestalozzi in turn weeps along with mother and son. That’s what he likes to call “a positive reaction”!
Peering at the sky through the window, the scholar Di Fiore approves with a nod of his big, brainy head.
– All told, he grunts, three dehydrated bodies. As if the atmosphere isn’t wet enough already!
Sunny and fresh, Quiroga’s laughter washes over the group at the window. Meanwhile, the Mother has settled firmly into her abstract attitude. The Principal, nonplussed at how long her conscience is taking to respond, raises his eyes to the bust of Sarmiento snoozing atop the Principal’s bookshelf between a criollo duck and a turtle, both stuffed. In the national hero’s dour countenance he undoubtedly finds the impetus he needs, because right away he forgets about the Mother and sets upon the boy, who at that moment is busy exchanging smiles and gestures with a small group of pupils outside, who reciprocate in vibrant solidarity.
– You, Child! declaims the Principal. Listen to me, Child! Look me in the eyes, Child! Because of your misbehaviour I’ve had to summon your mother, taking her away from the home that needs her so much. Answer me, Child! Is that any way to repay the thousand-and-one sacrifices your mother has made to raise you, protect you, and educate you? Mother, I said. Sacred word! Let’s add up the material costs alone. How old are you, Child?
– Ten, the boy answers without much concern.
– A real little man. Let’s say it costs a peso a day (and I’m underestimating) to keep you in food, clothing, and school expenses. Tell me, Child. How many days are there in a commercial year?
– A hundred and sixty, the boy hazards adventurously.
In the Principal’s face, the dun accents of Saturn are accentuated.
– Three hundred and sixty! he shouts. Three hundred and sixty times ten makes three thousand six hundred Argentine pesos.
The boy goes wide-eyed at this mathematical revelation.
– And that’s not all! the Principal adds triumphantly. Let’s suppose your mother were in possession of that much capital and calculate how much interest she’d have earned on it in ten years. Child, do you understand how interest rates work?
– No, sir.
– I suspected as much. Let’s take, for example, an interest rate of five percent, which is what Mortgage Bonds are paying. Let’s see, here. Just a minute.
Seizing a pencil, he does a feverish calculation on a notepad. At the same time Adam Buenosayres growls beside the window:
– God! What crime has this poor kid committed to deserve such punishment?
– A fist-fight with another kid in the hollow of Neuquén Street, responds Quiroga.
– Is that all? At his age, I was in a fight every day.
The scholar Di Fiore raises an index finger to his temple.
– See this scar? he says. Got hit by a rock when us guys in the Gaona gang challenged the guys from Billinghurst.
The four of them smile alongside the window. Sarmiento himself, on the bookshelf, seems less dour, as though he too were recalling the heroes Barrilito and Chuña.3 But the Principal is waving a sheet of paper in the boy’s face.
– One thousand eight hundred pesos in interest! he exclaims. Three thousand seven hundred in capital! Sum total: five thousand four hundred pesos!
Turning to the woman, he adds:
– Mother, after so much sacrifice for the sake of your child, are you going to let him be ruined by the influence of the street? Do you know where that influence could lead? To delinquency, the hospital, jail!
Quickly, Adam turns to his three friends and parodies:
– Jail, I said. Sacred word!
And he makes his escape through the door, leaving behind three cruel chortles, one mother engrossed in thought, one worried boy, one vexed Principal, one dead swallow.
A glacial wind whips through the column-flanked corridor. Adam Buenosayres deeply inhales its gusts. Then he slips between two columns out to the schoolyard where three hundred wound-up schoolboys yell and push and shove beneath a sky the colour of tarnished brass, between walls sweating moisture and fatigue. As he makes his way through hectic bunches of children, Adam Buenosayres takes the measure of the void in his soul. More than ever he feels a lack of internal pressure that leaves him helplessly exposed to external images. Scenes, shouts, colours, and shapes irrupt into his empty soul, like a mob of brutal strangers invading an uninhabited site.
Just then, a deafening clamour breaks out among the schoolboys. Looking across the schoolyard, he sees a swarm of boys around a centre he can’t yet make out. Their jeers and hoots of laughter seem to condense into one:
– Iron face! Iron face!
He walks toward the source of the uproar. But the chorus of boys is breached violently, as a kid comes charging out with head lowered in a wild bid to escape. Adam Buenosayres catches him on the fly and, glancing at his face, discovers the reason for the tumult: a terrible paralysis has hardened the lines of the child’s countenance, imposing a strange metal-or rock-like rigidity. Mouth and chin seem to be permanently contracted in a cruel rictus. His eyes, staring fixedly, express ferocity, undermined only by the tear trembling on each of his eyelids. He’s wearing a sailor suit; the long pants veil the severity of the orthopedic shoes. While straightening up the boy’s dishevelled clothes, Adam takes a look around. He sees a circle of faces observing him expectantly. Some of them, innocent in their wickedness, are still laughing and whispering, “Iron face!” Stroking the child’s cheeks still trembling under his hands, Adam asks him:
– What’s your name?
– Tristán Silva, answers Iron Face in a kind of grunt.
– Is this your first day at this sch
ool?
– Yes.
Adam uses his handkerchief to dry the two tears that can’t quite decide to slide down that frightful face. Then he holds out his open hand to the child.
– Tristán Silva, he says. You and I are going to be friends. How about it?
– Yes, grunts Tristán, who has grasped the offered hand.
To make the others aware of this gesture of friendship, Adam walks around among the onlookers, Tristán’s hand in his. Then he returns him to the group of his enemies, who now embrace and acclaim him. Oh, world! But Señor Henríquez, embalmer of birds, has just given the order to line up for a run. Three hundred schoolboys, anxious to shake off the cold, form up in impatient squads.
– Ready, set, go!
The race begins, the schoolyard rumbles underfoot, shouts of joy explode. Adam, in the centre of the circle, is watching the parade of vertiginous faces, when he feels Tristán Silva’s hand slip back into his.
– Shall we run? he asks.
– Yes! answers Tristan, piercing Adam with hard eyes.
Holding on tight to the child’s hand, Adam joins the circle of runners, amid flushed cheeks and noisy breathing. Clinging to Adam’s hand, Tristan hops in the air like a rag doll; the metal of his orthopedic boots clangs on the hard tiles. Not a single muscle moves in his face, but a long roar comes out of his chest and bursts from his lips. And Adam understands that Iron Face probably has no other way to laugh.
When the bell rings for the second time, the pupils break from standing at attention and in orderly fashion seek their habitual place in line. Adam is standing in front of his pupils, observing as they form up in a wiggly double file that is gradually straightening. Suddenly, he sees the Principal approaching with a triumphant air, his eyes tearful, his mouth quivering in an imminent sob.
– They’ve reacted! he exclaims. The mother and the boy have reacted positively!
– Congratulations, Adam tells him, winking to his left at Quiroga, who chokes back laughter.
But the Principal waves an energetic hand above his brow, as though refusing an invisible crown of laurel leaves.
– Just doing my job, he concedes. All in a day’s work.
Drying his tears with a coloured handkerchief, he turns and flees down the hallway.
Emptiness of soul, solitude, and ice. The two lines are now still, and Adam Buenosayres, tearing himself away from the spectacle of his own desolation, looks at thirty childish faces looking back at him, faithful mirrors of his own face. They mustn’t notice anything! And, as so many times before, a revivifying echo awakes in his heart at the sight of this new world waiting for him. To approach their world, to go back up the stream of their newborn language, grasp that burgeoning new life pliant to the mere weight of his voice or gaze! So he puts his right hand on Ramos’s shoulder and his left on Falcone’s, each of them at the head of a line.
– Did you bring your composition? he asks Ramos, the boy with the golden head.
– Yes, Ramos answers. It was a hard subject.
– Did it turn out all right?
In the boy’s blue eyes there is a glint of restless creativity.
– Hmm! he says. The description of Polyphemus . . .
– Sir! interrupts Falcone, rubbing his hands together. Today we’re doing Pythagoras’s theorem!
Adam looks at him, and smiles again at how the well the bird’s name suits the boy: his lean profile, bushy brows, and keen gaze are somehow as fierce and avid as intelligence itself.
– That’s right, Adam admits. Were you looking forward to learning it?
– Yes, answers Falcone.
– Why?
– The kids in the other sixth-grade class say they didn’t understand it.
– How tragic! Ramos mocks.
– I always understand, Falcone says confidently, blinking like a bird of prey.
Adam hugs the two heads, golden and hawkish, to his chest. Then, sought by many eyes, he begins his habitual walk between the double file.
First he comes upon Bustos, who stops him with his sharp voice, his perfidious clown smile, and his puddle-coloured eyes that look about ready to pop out of his head.
– Sir, announces Bustos. Another miracle!
– What happened?
– Cueto laughed!
Adam turns to Cueto, the sphinx of the class, and contemplates the child’s immutably serious face.
– No! he exclaims. It can’t be true!
– Cross my heart and hope to die! Bustos assures him.
Amid singing laugher, Adam moves on, pausing in front of Gaston Dauthier, a bundle of nerves.
– Bonjour, Dauthier.
– Bonjour, monsieur, Gaston answers. Are we going to play against the other class today?
– Hmm, Adam prevaricates dubiously.
He turns to the orator Fratino who, like Gaston, is already peering up at the sky.
– What do you think? he asks the boy.
Teseo Fratino raises a professorial hand and suggests in an exquisite voice:
– Should the weather conditions be favourable . . .
– Will we get rain in the fourth period? Adam insists.
– Sir, I cannot say. I have not consulted the barometer.
Fratino’s vocabulary provokes more laughter. But the orator’s cold eyes nail his mockers, and a sneer of disdain breaks the impeccable line of his mouth. Then Adam abruptly sticks two fingers into the ribs of Terzián, the actor.
– Hands up! he says.
Terzián raises his arms, as if terrified. His mercurial face reflects fear, then fury, then a furtive attempt at resistance. His arm begins to creep down to draw an imaginary revolver. But Adam keeps him covered, and the actor soon gestures his compliance before the inevitable.
Fatso Atadell has been watching the farce, his mouth full, eternally ruminating the pleasant fruits of the earth. He is vast in flesh, in clothing, in smiles.
– Fatso! Adam accosts him, pretending to be deeply concerned. Chewing on something again? Is man born only to encase himself in a horrible layer of fat? No, Fatso, no! The spirit has its needs, too. If you stopped chewing for a minute, you’d hear – oh, Fatso! – the voice of your soul asking for its lunch.
Serenely impervious, not ceasing to chew and smile, Fatso Atadell pretends to ignore Adam’s chiding.
– Sir, he announces. Papucio is sad.
Adam turns to look at Papucio, who has the look of an adolescent malevo overcome by melancholy.
– What’s wrong? Adam asks him.
– Nothing, grunts Papucio. My flowerpots are too tight.
– Your what?
– My shoes, sir. They’re gonna bring on my loquats again.
– What loquats?
– My corns. And if we play against the other class today – oh, brother!
Américo Nossardi is standing at the end of the line, apparently wrapped up in his own little world. He’s examining a model airplane, the patient work of his own hands.
– Does it fly? Adam asks him.
The young man raises perplexed eyes.
– No, he says. The motor’s too heavy.
The review is finished, and youthful squirming is making the lines wobble. Adam Buenosayres, detached from himself, is now one more member of the noisy phalanx.
– Heads up! he shouts. Look to the future!
Thirty childish smiles respond to his joke.
– Forward, march!
Beneath a sky of tarnished brass proceed thirty smiles.
The classroom is on the top floor, olive-coloured, with a big corner window overlooking the intersection of two little suburban streets. The rows of desks are all oriented toward the light of the window. On the right stands a wardrobe; on top of it, displayed for the world’s amazement, rests a cardboard planetarium, Nossardi’s ingenious construction. The nine planets, dyed a demonic red, revolve by means of a clockwork device around a happy sun within a space of violent indigo. Facing the pupils’ seats is the teacher’s d
esk, its only decoration a globe of the world with a cracked and fissured surface (a symbol?). Two chalkboards extend their black expanse across the front and lefthand walls. The former has a right-angled triangle drawn on it. On each of the triangle’s sides, Falcone has just drawn a square in different colours, to wit: a yellow square on the hypotenuse, and on the two adjacent sides a green and a blue one. At the other blackboard, Núñez is concluding the arithmetic demonstration.
– That’s it, sir, he says. A difference of only twenty-six square millimetres.
– Very good, Adam Buenosayres approves from his desk. He turns then to Falcone, who has just completed the graphic demonstration.
– What does that demonstrate? Adam asks.
– It demonstrates, recites Falcone, that in every right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
– Good. You can both return to your seats.
As Falcone and Núñez go back to their desks, Adam addresses the class:
– Has everyone understood?
– Yes, sir.
– So this is the famous Pythagorean theorem? Falcone says, without hiding the disappointment already gnawing at his voracious mind.
– Nothing more, nothing less, Adam responds. Let’s see, now. Who was Pythagoras?
– Sir, answers Dauthier. He was a Greek philosopher and mathematician.
Fratino the orator lets his melodious voice be heard:
– The story goes that Pythagoras discovered his theorem in the bathtub and that he ran out into the street, completely naked, crying “Eureka!”
– Musta bin a nutcase! Papucio grumbles from his corner.
But golden-headed Ramos smiles with pointed irony.
– Wasn’t Archimedes the guy who jumped up out of the bathtub? he asks.
– Archimedes was the one, Adam confirms. The orator Fratino is slandering Pythagoras, who was a very serious gentleman.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 41