VII
A double door of monumental proportions stopped us. After a short rest to catch our breath, Schultz said:
– Take a look at the door before us.
I looked. Besides its gigantic size, its solid bronze construction, and that hint of mystery suggested by closed doors, I admired for a moment the profusion of bas-reliefs covering it from top to bottom.
– Uh-huh, I said at last. A door with ornamental motifs.
– Those aren’t ornamental motifs! protested Schultz, visibly wounded. Those designs contain an occult allegorical meaning which you must decipher if you want the door to open for you.
I looked again. The bas-reliefs on the left leaf seemed to represent (with admirable success) a paradisal orchard where myriad trees bowed gracefully beneath the weight of flowers and fruit, and where numerous birds, tigers, deer, monkeys, and serpents lived together in the most wonderful friendship. Above, and to the right, as though in the domain of heaven, could be seen a winepress where wingèd numina crushed large bunches of grapes underfoot; the juice pouring from them ramified into a hundred streams and channels irrigating the orchard. In the upper-left portion, other genies were milking a powerful celestial cow, and from its udders descended a river of milk that girded paradise. And man could be seen anywhere and everywhere: lord and master of the garden was he, lying in the shade of trees and stretched out by running streams, eating without travail the easily available fruit or drinking without care the free-flowing juice, motionless in ecstatic contemplation or aflame in a whirling dance.
The right leaf of the door vividly rendered a cheerless humanity toiling away. Here, calloused labourers could be seen working hard land, ploughing, seeding, and harvesting. There, tossed and turned by an angry sea, fishermen of bitter aspect were pulling up nets pregnant with seafood. On plateaux and plains, rain or shine, hardened shepherds watched over flocks and droves. Deep in the jungle, amid clawed beasts and thorny vegetation, ferocious hunters hurled spears at the wild boar, set traps for deer, released falcons against the pheasant or greyhounds against the hare. The most extraordinary thing was that all those fruits torn painfully from earth, water, and air (corncobs and grains, tubers and fruit, fish and shellfish, flocks and herds, birds and reptiles, frogs and insects) were being conveyed into a huge human mouth by means of carts, boats, pack-horses, mule trains, camel caravans, and elephants.
– What’s your reading? Schultz interrogated me as soon as I had finished studying the door.
– Bah! I answered. There’s an allegorical meaning, but it’s pathetically simple.
– How so? said he, visibly disconcerted.
– The two leaves of the door tell two stories in contrast and opposition. Any nincompoop can understand that the left leaf depicts the Golden Age, when earth and sky spontaneously gave us their fruits, animals were meek, and man lollygagged in perpetual delight. So, necessarily, the leaf on the right symbolizes the Iron Age we live in now, as evidenced by all those tiny human figures knocking themselves out to bring home the bacon. Even more important, the leaf on the left refers to the perfect man, newly sprung from his Artificer’s hands, and who needed nothing more than fruit to sustain a body meant to be a transient support for his soul, which was continually slipping away on the roads of ecstacy. On the other hand, the right-hand leaf depicts the joyless humanity we belong to, one that devours all of creation in order to fatten up an anatomy that nowadays we doubt is even inhabited by a soul.
– Conclusion? Schultz asked me.
– I notice that both panels harp too much on the edible. It makes me uneasy.
– Why?
– Because I’m sure that behind that door you’re going to show me something like the Hell of Gluttony.
No sooner had I pronounced these last words than the door solemnly opened; apparently, I’d found the key. I immediately strode forward, followed by a sourly silent Schultz (obviously he wasn’t pleased by how easily I’d solved the riddle). The door closed behind us, and we found ourselves in the murky hall, with no apparent exit.
– To heck with all the gutbuckets in Buenos Aires! exclaimed the ill-humoured astrologer. I know very well they’re of no interest whatsoever. But those abominable gobblers, those lustful omnivores, those greasy kitchen heroes demanded their place in my Helicoid. Seriously, they turn my stomach! Look at the walls in the city, its subway stations, newspapers, and magazines, all full of posters and ads exalting the virtues of a hundred laxatives, a thousand pills, and the ten thousand medicos devoted to restoring a million broken-down digestive tracts in our burgh.
– If I were you, I wouldn’t talk too loud on this subject, I told him.
– And why not?
– Rumour has it that by dint of some strange experiments you’ve infinitely enlarged the repertoire of the edible.
– For example?
– Isn’t it true that, at a meeting of the Friends of Art,45 you ate a bouquet of blue sweet peas decorating the conference table? And at the Teatro Colón, during the second act of Lohengrin, didn’t you do the same thing to an expensive orchid you spied languishing on the breast of a young Fräulein? Then, at a luncheon in the Spanish Embassy, weren’t you caught using blasts from the soda siphon to alter the traditional structure of Codfish à la Biscay? And haven’t you been seen a hundred times at Gildo’s, revolutionizing the innocent laws of the parrillada criolla with outlandish barbecued combinations?
The astrologer smiled modestly.
– Physiology of Taste, he said. Getting stuffed is not to be confused with getting fat!46
Then, avoiding the subject and resuming his look of disgust, he added:
– Let’s go over there. We’ll only take a look.
He led me through some grimy serge curtains onto a platform. From there, the Third Inferno was suddenly revealed in all its amplitude to my eyes, ears, and nose. Actually, I’ve just reversed the order in which my senses were offended. My sense of smell was hit first, and by a stench so nauseating that it made me wonder if Schultz hadn’t gathered all the eateries in Buenos Aries into that hole – inns in Carabelas Alley, cantinas in the Boca, grills in Mataderos, dairies in Paternal, plus every last pizzeria on the Paseo de Julio. At almost the same moment my ears were beleaguered by a din that was nearly music but not quite; only afterward did I find out what it really was. Seconds later, my eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness of the dive and could make out something like a monstrous Banquet. The table, in the form of a gigantic spiral, took up the central area of this circle of hell. Sitting around the table in their thousands were what looked like commensals in rigorously formal attire, apparently being served by what looked like scurrying, outsized waiters.
– The kitchens are on the right, Schultz whispered to me. The vomitoria are on the left.
We went down a little iron staircase like the ones you see in engine rooms. When we got to the floor level of the banquet, Schultz dragged me over to an area terribly overheated by great ovens and braziers, where a hundred gigantic figures in scullions’ caps were apparently dedicated to practising an infernal chemistry. By the light of flames flickering from ovens and stoves, I recognized, with a shiver, the chefs’ lineage: they were Cyclopes. I clearly saw their heat-flushed faces pouring sweat, their single eyes in mid-forehead watering copiously from the smoke and onions! Darting and feinting among huge legs like stalking tree-trunks, the astrologer and I made our way through the Cyclopean kitchen.
Some chefs were turning monstrous spits on which whole animals were impaled and roasting golden brown: there were steers fat from winter pasture, greasy heifers with the skin on, and fillies that provide the juicy flank steak so dear to the Ranquel Indians, devourers of horsemeat. Other chefs were basting the suckling pigs and lambs roasting on vertical spits with copious brine, or pouring it over immense grills where thousands of chitterlings, large intestines, kidneys, udders, and testicles, as well as other internal and external mammalian organs were sizzling, alongside their brothers in fire, t
he sausages: chorizos criollos, Cantabrian blood sausage, Italian cotechini, long Andalusian sausages, and Teutonic frankfurters. Over here, busy kitchen boys were oven-roasting a universe of chickens, tinamous, turkeys, geese, pheasants, ducks, quails, and owls, turning them over and basting them in metal serving dishes. Over there, they stirred enormous cauldrons a-simmer with all the fauna of lake, sea, and river, from the gigantic pejerrey of the Paraná River, pride of its species, to the aristocratic Chilean lobster, and including the spider crab of Tierra del Fuego, salmon from the pisciferous Lake Nahuel Huapí, fish and shellfish from Mar del Plata, carp and catfish from the Argentine Delta, and scaly creatures from the Chascomús lagoon; as well as octopuses from foggy Galicia, cod from chilly Norway, Pacific-plying tuna, and crabs from industrious Japan. In fathomless pots, pasta was boiling alla italiana – tangled tagliatelle, deliciously stuffed capelletti, pregnant ravioli, sinuous spaghetti, and democratic macaroni. Then there was the difficult alchemy of making sauces in earthen casseroles or copper saucepans, through the slow cooking of hares marinated in wine, partridges boiled in milk or steeped in cognac, cockles and oysters in whisky, to all of which were added obscene tomatoes and weepiferous onions, proverbial oregano, fragrant basil, and glorious laurel, along with treacherous garlic and never-forgotten parsley, arcades ambo.47
By this point in our tour through the kitchen, we were spattered in grease up to the neck, red-eyed from the smoke, and sneezing from the spice, when along came a Cyclops disguised as a maître d’hôtel (livery trimmed with braid, short trousers, white stockings and gloves), barking impatient orders at the scullions:
– Trincha! Subito!
Then he turned to the legion of cyclopean waiters escorting him:
– Presto! he shouted. Avanti!
– Ciro Rossini! I cried, recognizing the dyed hair, nighthawk face, and voice from some sentimental comedy.
Not hiding his discomfiture, the Cyclops looked at us searchingly for a moment with his single eye. But once recognition had dawned, he hastened to greet us with the same festive smile we’d always found at Ciro’s Gazebo.
– Boys! he beamed. A little party in famiglia! Bravo! A tavola!
And he pushed us amicably toward the spiral-shaped table which, as I said earlier, occupied the central area of the cave. Leaving us immediately, he turned to hound the waiters, already on their way back bearing great steaming platters, and growled at them:
– Subito! Trincha! Presto!48
The astrologer Schultz and I had to dodge the rowdy platter-bearing crowd threatening to bowl us over. At the same time, the music (or whatever it was), which I’ve already mentioned with some reluctance, underwent a change in tempo, its former largo accelerating to a prestissimo that makes me laugh now but which at the time filled me with unspeakable dread. Once the last waiter had filed by, I noticed a kiosk in front of me, similar to the ones used by military bands; inside there were Cyclops musicians in nightmarish uniforms, scratching and blowing at instruments unfamiliar to me except for the colossal string bass and two giant trombones. The instruments were variously made out of long gourds, primitive tubas, lengths of pipe, and calabashes; and they produced deep bass tones, burps, and hiccups as they played something like a flatulent Brandenburg Concerto.
– Cute little orchestra! Isn’t that you all over! I cried to Schultz, expressing my displeasure.
– A mere detail, he clarified. Let’s go over to the table and see what’s really important in this part of hell.
I followed the astrologer over to the banquet table, where I could observe at my pleasure the double line of commensals seated there. They were skeletal, scrawny-necked men and women, with green faces, deep bags under their eyes, and bilious hands. The men were stuffed into rumpled rental tuxedos; the women were shrouded in decadent evening gowns. The extraordinary thing was that all of them, despite their sickly appearance, were furiously chewing and swallowing the myriad varieties of food being produced in the infernal kitchen and served up by the white-gloved Cyclopes. But their voracity was mechanical: they ate with no pleasure or distaste whatsoever. It wasn’t long before I became aware of the close relationship between the music and the rhythm of the banquet, for as the orchestra’s crescendos mounted, the waiters became more frantic and the commensals swallowed faster and faster. And when music and banquet had reached a nightmarish tempo, Ciro Rossini, exultant in his livery, reappeared carrying a skeleton with articulated joints, which he then dangled over the banqueters, making it dance in the air over their heads.
– Gobble till you burst! Ciro shouted at them in a fanatical tone. How many lives do we have? Just this one! What are we, after all? This!
He shook the skeleton vehemently, then hurried off at the same trot as when he had come.49 But it was clear the diners were at the end of their rope. Some began to nod off, others fell face-down on their plates. And then the Cyclopes revealed just how nasty they really were: they shook the sleepers, pinched their noses closed, and forced them to keep on swallowing. When the sufferers at last fell under the table, another squad of Cyclopes picked them up like limp rags and carried them off to the back, while a new team of commensals, arranged in two lines, silently occupied the empty seats.
– Let’s go over there, Schultz said, pointing toward the Cyclopes who were making off with their human cargo.
But instead of following them, the astrologer got down on all fours and crawled under the table. Once again I imitated him – Lord knows how grudgingly! Once we got to the other side, we headed toward an area of gloom opening onto a new sector of this hellish place. We hadn’t gone far, when countless lightbulbs switched on above, piercing the darkness and projecting cones of light onto an endless number of operating tables. Alongside these, cyclopean surgeons attired in white aprons, masks, and rubber gloves were sorting and preparing their alarming instruments. Presently, the Cyclopes arrived bearing the surfeited banqueters, flopped them down on the operating tables, and roughly stripped them. Then, with diabolical zeal, the giants in surgical masks set upon those inert anatomies, subjecting them to implacable emetics, enemas, catheters, and needle-jabs. The horror of those bodies thus stripped naked, the fury of the operators, the violent reaction of the patients, along with the stench of viscera clogging the air: all combined to make me double over in an immense nausea.
– I’m not going one step further in this inferno! I shouted at Schultz.
Turning on my heels, I took off running toward the lighted area where the banquet was in progress, accompanied by Schultz, who fled no less urgently than I. But at the strip of semi-darkness, I stopped short. In front of me were one, two, three bizarre characters seated upon as many toilets and no doubt waiting to go back to the table. The personage in the middle was a middle-aged homunculus, scrawny, yellowish, and bald, swaying like a pendulum as he dozed atop his john, and gargling a sort of puerile snore. On his left, with a pensive air, sat a priestly figure who, in the land of the living, must have been very fat; now, however, his black soutane was gathered up around two skinny thighs. The third character, to the right of the homunculus, was neither asleep nor pensive; a dapper old fop, full of himself, he was looking this way and that with an air of offended dignity.
The gravity of those men contrasted so greatly with their indecorous posture that I turned to Schultz, bursting to unleash a choice remark. And I would have let him have it, too, had he not cut me short: the astrologer was quite upset about the toilet-bowl heroes.
– Shhh! he whispered. An unlucky encounter!
With one finger to his lips and the very image of stealth, Schultz was trying to tiptoe away. But he hadn’t taken three steps when the homunculus abruptly stopped snoring:
– Good afternoon, Schultz, young man! he purred, half-raising his right eyelid.
The astrologer stood stock still as if turned to stone.
– Don Celso, sir, he stammered. If at this grave hour it were possible for me . . .
– Hah! the homunculus barked mirthlessl
y. The past comes back to haunt you, as they say in novels. It’s a small world, young man! I can still see in my mind’s eye those three orchids on the buffet.
– What about her? asked a stunned Schultz.
– Three nuptial orchids! purred the homunculus. And the sweet little gold ring you put on her dainty finger. “I love you, yes, I love you!” Coo, coo! “Oh, forever and ever!” Of course. Little rich boys who sneak into honourable homes to trouble the sleep of virgins.
– Dearly beloved brethren! the priestly figure exclaimed in a supplicating tone.
– My apologies! stuttered Schultz. I was so young!
But the homunculus was swaying and snoring again. Seeing this, the astrologer turned to me beseechingly:
– What the ogre just said is a bare-faced lie! he revealed. Because I honestly did love her, I swear it.
– Who was she? I asked.
– The daughter of the ogre you see in front of you, who as usual has just nodded off again. Her name was Nora. Imagine braided hair of bronze, willow-green eyes, the bust of Minerva, the thighs of Atalanta . . .
– My brethren! the priestly figure interrupted again, unable to bring himself to cover his scandalized ears.
–. . . and a sensibility, concluded Schultz, that is unique to the girls of the Flores barrio. Because, as you are surely aware, girls from Flores are made from the wood of Stradivarius violins . . .
Quite alarmed by his madrigalesque exaltation, I gave him a few pats on the shoulder:
– Easy does it! I said. And for Pete’s sake, talk normal.
But the astrologer ignored me and pointed his index finger at the sleeping Don Celso.
– There you have the scourge of my first dreams, he growled. Ah, monster! I can still see him at the festive board on that unforgettable noonday.
Once again the homunculus opened his small sleep-filled eyes:
– Good afternoon, Schultz, young man! he gurgled. Where were we? Ah, yes! We were talking about three nuptial orchids and a poor, inconsolable bride. Don’t imagine, however, that you were the only good-for-nothing. And believe me, if they hadn’t dragged me away from the famous dining room in the nick of time, all my girls would have ended up as old maids. Do you remember the details?
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 54