Adam Buenosayres: A Novel

by Leopoldo Marechal

  – Shhh! Buxom Betty silenced me. Dr Núñez is not available.

  We walked away from the pigsty, heading for the exit from Mudtown, which wasn’t far off.

  VI

  – Blessèd are those of strong kidneys and unyielding waist!30 Blessèd are those who neither besmirch their soul with the body’s delirium nor destroy their body with the delirium of the soul, but have observed the happy medium and harmonious order in which man honourably takes his place between the level of the Angel and the level of the Beast! Happy are those who have no imagination, or who’ve had its wings clipped by the scissors of loving Reason! And happy those who, upon hearing the sirens’ song, have listened while bound to the mast like Ulysses, so they could enjoy the music of the intelligible realm without foundering on the reefs of the sensual!

  Schultz solemnly pronounced these words when the second turn of the spiral hove into view. The astrologer’s flatus vocis seems justified now, as I evoke in memory images from the second circle of hell. Yet my pen hesitates, so shocking were the scenes I saw in that sector, and so numerous the hosts who suffered there the rigours of the Earthly Venus.

  We had left Mudtown through another cleft in the wall and, abandoning umbrella and boots, we came to a halt at the edge of a precipice that cut off our path. When I peered over the edge into the abyss, a gust of hot wind lashed at my face, but not a single human sound arose from the depths. Suddenly, something like a very distant drum started beating below; the drumbeat grew louder and louder until it was like thunder, making the walls of the abyss vibrate, and I jumped back. But then, just as quickly, the thunder ebbed to a drumbeat and then to silence, a silence pregnant with menace.

  – There’s the bridge, Schultz advised me, heading for a fragile structure soaring from one side of the abyss to the other.

  I followed him without comment, but was suspicious of the bridge, which at a distance put me in mind of the toboggan slide or some other contrivance of the astrologer’s fertile imagination. Great was my relief when, drawing near, I saw it was indeed a bridge, complete with wooden handrails, and looking a lot like the ones you see arching over streams in Chinese woodcuts. As usual, my relief was succeeded by a burst of daring that had me blithely strolling across the bridge without a care. So I didn’t notice the astrologer’s brow gradually clouding over with worry. We must have been about halfway across, when the thunderous drumbeat started up again, but this time a vicious wind swept up from the abyss and nearly blew us away.

  – Grab the rail! shouted Schultz.

  I obeyed in the nick of time and closed my eyes until drumbeat and wind had died down as quickly as they had arisen. But Schultz still looked worried:

  – It’s not over yet, he announced. Now comes the hard part.

  His gaze sought something on the remaining stretch of bridge before us.

  – Where has the filthy beast got to? he wondered aloud, moving forward with extreme caution.

  No sooner had he spoken than the monster appeared at the head of the bridge. Now, looking back over the incidents of the journey, I tell myself that animal’s showing up there was the nastiest trick Schultz played on me in all the spirals of his Helicoid. Blocking our way was the gigantic figure of a woman, completely naked. Her dishevelled locks were entwined with brass-foil roses and chiffon laurel leaves. Her idiot’s brow bulged above wild eyes, below which fleshy lips greedily protruded in the four cardinal directions. Where her breasts should have been, the heads of two dogs stared slit-eyed, as if dozing. Her belly, huge and round, looked like the battlefield of every delirium. A crab with immobile pincers concealed or substituted for her sex, and from each of her buttocks sprouted a gawky gallinaceous wing. All in all, the beast expressed a sensuality so painful that my legs turned to mush at the mere sight of her.

  – I’m not going any further! I protested, turning away from the courtesan who stood guard at the head of the bridge.

  – Don’t let Dame Lust intimidate you, the astrologer advised me. Don’t let her see you’re afraid.

  – I’m not afraid of that scarecrow! I retorted. And, if you ask me, those bloody wings growing out of her rear-end are in mighty questionable taste.

  Paying no attention to my protests, the astrologer Schultz took my arm and led me toward the woman. But Dame Lust was stirring; her two dogshead hooters stuck their muzzles out and began to bark furiously; her sexcrab extended menacing pincers; and the two ungainly gluteal wings started flapping vigorously in a futile attempt to take flight. Hopping like a chicken, the woman came closer and stared us in the face:

  – How ’bout it, boys! she cooed in a monotone. How ’bout it!

  – Yeah, yeah, answered Schultz without stopping.

  – How ’bout it, boys! How ’bout it! intoned Dame Lust, backing away from us in little hops.

  Thus we arrived at the end of the bridge and stepped onto terra firma.

  – Goddam franeleros! she yelled after us as she returned to her post, the two dogsheads rabidly biting each other.

  Before I go on to describe the various precincts of the second spiral and the order in which we toured them, let me clarify that this sector of hell was nothing like a barrio. As I later realized, it looked more like an enormous movie-production lot, where weird set-designers had seemingly mounted, one next to another, six heterogeneous sets unconnected by any passage.

  The first scene (and don’t ask me how we got there) was an immense theatre, decorated with pornographic plaster figurines, threadbare curtains, and fly-specked mirrors. A multitude of randy men filled the orchestra seats and galleries up to the rafters. The air was so thick with cigarette smoke, animal heat, old sweat, garlic soup, and cheap perfume, you could’ve cut it with a knife. While Schultz was looking for a pair of empty seats, I scanned the crowd and spotted the ornate jackets of milkmen, the blue coveralls of mechanics, the shiny suits of office workers, the wide-brimmed hats of students, the top hats of aristocrats, and the Perramus trenchcoats typical of burghers.

  – Half of Villa Crespo is gathered here, I remarked to Schultz as I sat down beside him.

  – Three quarters of the whole city, he corrected me. But let’s listen now.

  The crowd was clearly growing impatient. Suddenly an infernal stomping of feet raised a most acrid cloud of dust. The men in the upper gallery responded with jeers and whistles, and banana peels were pelted against the curtain bearing ads from our most noted specialists in venereal disease. In an apparent attempt to assuage the spectators’ impatience, a brass band somewhere off-stage began playing, out of tune, the San Lorenzo March.31 But the whistling only intensified, and a chorus of indignant voices, a thousand-strong, struck up a chant:

  – Song-and-dance, no. We want a speech! Song-and-dance, no. We want a speech!

  The brass band stopped playing, the curtain went up, an expectant hush filled the hall. Suddenly, emerging from backstage through red curtains, a little man came on stage and went straight to the footlights, as a clamorous ovation received him triumphantly.

  – The pipsqueak Bernini! I cried.

  – Quiet! ordered Schultz. Names are not be mentioned in this circle of hell.

  It was indeed the pipsqueak Bernini who had just come on stage, receiving the applause with the blasé majesty of a condottiere. Since the applause grew louder, the pipsqueak acknowledged it with a thin smile.

  – Listen to the Boss! someone shouted from the orchestra seats.

  – Boss! Boss! howled the delirious multitude.

  The pipsqueak Bernini raised his hand in command:

  – Students with eyes eager as bloodhounds for the chase! he declaimed. Salesclerks intoxicated by movies! Factory workers with active right-hands! Bourgeois gentlemen in unwilling celibacy! And above all, you, oh federal-government employees! It is no ordinary problem that brings us together in this enthusiastic conference, but one that has tormented man since time immemorial. The raciest pages of history are littered with attempted solutions. I refer to the problem of sex.
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  – Very good! someone shouted.

  – When he speaks, he becomes a giant!

  – Silence! Silence!

  The orator made a sign, and some hidden projector bathed him in a cone of yellow light.

  – In today’s society, the pipsqueak resumed, this perennial problem has taken on catastrophic proportions. As you are all no doubt aware, an imbalance between supply and demand drives up the price of articles of prime necessity, precisely when the demand for them outstrips their supply. Well, gentlemen, that is just what’s happening in the case of women in our city of Buenos Aires.

  Deep sighs were heaved in the hall, and the beam of light falling on Bernini turned from yellow to red.

  – Do you sigh, my brave listeners? exclaimed the pipsqueak. Yes, it is your sighs, and not some noisome wind, that come to pluck at the strings of my lyre! I’ll not weary your legitimate attention with statistics. But tell me this: who among you has not found himself in a café of an evening, in the company of a hundred-odd members of our sex, gazing avidly, silently, hungrily at three or four feminine divinities inaccessibly ensconced in a stage box where they struggle with their rebellious musical instruments?32 Who among you, I say, has not been at a family dance in Villa Ortúzar, wasting your breath and patience trying, in vain, to get a dance with one of those disdainful beauties who plays hard-to-get? Disdainful, I call them, and with good reason. For, as if it weren’t bad enough that the adorable creatures are so few, we must also suffer the way they treat us with haughty superiority. A superiority, it must be said in all fairness, that’s due only to their advantageous situation in the marketplace.

  – That’s right! That’s right! shouted several voices above the dull roar of the rest of the audience.

  – You’re becoming indignant, my brethren! thundered Bernini. A just anger fills your breasts and darts fiercely from your eyes. And what about Florida Street? Women pass by in twos and threes, dressed and coiffed like goddesses, with an absent air as of mythological beasts, with the insulting arrogance of all that is costly. You see them and get a lump in your throats. You’d do anything for them: stoop to clear the sidewalk of old streetcar tickets lest they trip on them; or unscrew their belly-buttons and polish them up with the useless silk of your ties.

  – He’s as good as Castelar!33 cried a Galician Spaniard in ecstasy.

  – Not even the great Alfredo Palacios34 at the top of his game had this man’s silver tongue, declared an electrician, with tears in his eyes.

  – Alas, gentlemen! the pipsqueak added. In vain you shave your homely mugs daily. In vain you exhaust the imagination of your tailors. In vain you resort to massages, hair removal, and aesthetic surgery in hopes of achieving the charm that Nature, cruel Stepmother, has denied you. The beauties ignore you, or pretend to ignore you. And now, bring on the bearded philosophers from the North! I dare them to expound, in front of me, their bearded theories about the sadness of Buenos Aires!35 I’ll show them the sole cause and origin of our famous melancholy: it’s that the opposite sex condemns us to solitude! Ah, gentlemen, admit it! At one time or another, some lonely Buenos Aires midnight had you feeling the urge to weep bitterly against the worthy jacket of some night watchman!

  The hall exploded into irrepressible sobs. Sodden eyes were covered by multicoloured handkerchiefs. The beam of reddish light falling on the orator turned a lugubrious purple.

  – But I haven’t yet come to the most serious issue, announced Bernini. I wouldn’t be standing here before you if our cause were not also of concern to the nation, whose interest far surpasses the sum of our individual interests. For I wonder now: what will become of our homeland if this oppressive separation of the sexes continues? Ah, gentlemen, I seem to hear even now the bones of our forefathers turning in their graves! Toothless mouths open and cry out to us: “The Fatherland is in danger!”

  Universal was the consternation among the audience. Men were collapsing in a faint in the orchestra seats, and five portraits of national heroes – part of the stage decor – came clattering down from their place on high. In the midst of the pandemonium and the bustle of the stretcher bearers, the pipsqueak Bernini raised a stentorian voice and restored calm:

  – Well then, brethren! he cried. Lift up your hearts! For the hour has come to solve the problem!

  Cheers and applause greeted his words, and the orator took a bow, smiling beneath the rain of flowers falling from everywhere, as the lighting turned from darkest purple to the rosiest of pinks.

  – And you will ask me, how will it be solved? Here is my answer: either by limiting the production of males (a viable option only if the National Congress resolves to correct Nature’s injustice). Or by taking the pedagogical route and passing a law to make women take courses and learn all about the hapless male sex, not only in terms of our topography but also of our history, sentiment, finances, and hedonism. This instruction would involve the use of photographs, colour illustrations, famous anecdotes, plaster replicas, vertical and longitudinal cross-sections, and even live specimens.

  Gleeful laughter and roars of joy resounded in the hall. Thousands of canes and hats were thrown up onto the stage. One respectable burgher, in a gesture of liberality, released a dozen doves he’d brought in a cage. Then the audience surged toward the dais, intending, I suppose, to take possesion of the pipsqueak and hoist him aloft in triumph. I never found out if they actually did so, because Schultz tugged me out of the human deluge and led me through a deserted corridor to the exit.

  As I mentioned earlier, there was no linkage between the sets, no intermediary passage from one to another. And so the exit was in fact the entrance to the second infernal scenario. I’ll now attempt to describe it, though holding back certain crude details ill-suited to the decorum I wish for my story; indeed, the reader will often find me teetering on the edge of indecency. Now, on the threshold of the second scene, the astrologer Schultz solemnly warned me:

  – Look, but say nothing: that’s the watchword in the Pond. You may recognize many faces in this place, but charity demands our discretion and silence.

  Once we were inside, the warm, foggy, clammy atmosphere gave me the impression of a Turkish bath – the more so when, between jets of steam, I glimpsed Moorish architectural motifs. Equally dense was the prevalent silence. But suddenly there was a splash, and the most mournful of voices demanded:

  – Don’t disturb the water!

  Then, through the steam that was now thinning out, I saw an immense pond. Standing in water up to their knees, thousands of naked men and women were vegetating. I say “vegetating” because such was the idea suggested by those torsos locked in motionless embraces, united to the point of agony in every form of love imaginable, encrusted in and clinging to one another like the myriad branches of a leafy glade. Artificial suns, strategically distributed, rained fire down upon the multitude, wringing from them dense goat-like odours and rivers of sweat which flowed over necks, gleaming backs, bellies pressed against one another, hairy tufts, and thighs. The pond water seemed dead beneath a scum of reddish mildew and vegetal putrefaction. Here and there, amid the welter of nude bodies, grew plants with fleshy flowers of frightful beauty, evil-coloured mushrooms, and reeds as sharp as awls covered in pink snails’ eggs. Crazed by the human stench, swarms of glossy Spanish flies and horseflies furiously bombarded the multitude, stinging them repeatedly. Once in a while, one of the bodies would try to shake free of the embrace holding it locked to the rest; the whole human tree would then shake, releasing dreadful emanations from the pond, and pitiful voices stammered:

  – Don’t disturb the water!

  As if walking on eggs, the astrologer and I hurried along the bank of the pond, suffocating, sweating buckets, and determined to get ourselves out of that oven. But, leaving behind the Pond of the Lustful, we came upon a third setting no less unpleasant, which in my notes I’ve termed the Ravine of the Adulterers. It looked like an ancient riverbed, but no water had ever flowed over its gravel. Instead, some
thing like a metallurgical heat, an invisible fire scorched the riverbed’s sands, multicoloured rocks, and prickly cacti. Human creatures of both sexes, naked and sad, were hard at work in the ravine, carrying, or rather dragging along their onerous burdens. A cacophonous brass band accompanied them, playing the “Song of the Volga Boatmen,” but with such comical dissonance as to delight a Stravinsky.

  – Notice the overwhelming majority are men, Schultz told me.

  – How honourable for our city, I answered. But what the heck are those people dragging?

  – Come closer and see for yourself.

  Approaching the bank of the riverbed, I saw what workers had in tow: their own sexual organs, but grown to incredibly monstrous proportions; they were tugging and jerking them over the sharp stones of the ravine.

  – Brutal! I exclaimed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

  The band stopped playing at that point. Work stopped, too, and the workers waited.

  – Was one woman not enough for you? asked a voice as though from a loudspeaker.

  – Ah! answered the workers in chorus. One wasn’t enough!

  – Did you need two?

  – Ah, we needed two!

  – And why not three?

  – Ah! Why not three?

  – From another’s garden.

  – Ah, from another’s garden.36

  – Well, then, sweat it out now in the ravine!

  – Well, then, let’s sweat it out now in the ravine!

  The brass band started up again, and the workers started pulling with all their might. I looked and looked again among their company, certain I’d find many people I knew, but without success. A few vaguely familiar faces, when they noticed me, immediately turned away with a definitely suspicious celerity. Suddenly, a man broke apart from the group and approached me, walking with as martial a gait as his great burden allowed.

  – Conscript, atten-SHUN! he ordered in a stentorian voice.

  – Yes, colonel! I said, recognizing him and saluting.

  – Shhh! he silenced me. Absolute discretion! If you have to make a report, say that you saw Colonel X.