– It was a glorious noontide, said Schultz in an evocative tone. We had just sat down to table, and everyone’s face was beaming with joy, for I had slipped a little gold ring on her dainty ivory finger. “I love you, yes, I love you!”
– Coo, coo! rejoined Don Celso in a sing-song voice. “Oh, forever and ever!” And three orchids on the buffet. Coo, coo!
– On my right, continued the astrologer, Nora was silent and smiling, smiling and silent. Oh, springtime! O youth! Farewell, farewell! On my left, her three sisters burned and sizzled and consumed themselves like three wedding torches. In front of me, their sweet mother (ancient jewellery, antique lace) looked me over with darkened brow, like someone wondering what the future might hold: her mother dear, burdened with years, jewellery, lace, and smugness (begging Don Celso’s pardon, he being here among us). And at her side, Don Celso himself, here among us, with his napkin tied round his neck and playing the gruffly good-natured father-in-law (ah, the monster!). And the gay sounds in the house, the festive smells wafting from the kitchen. Who was that couple walking in the garden? Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Abelard and Heloise! Romance has died. A tombstone! Place a tombstone on the grave of romance! With the epitaph: “Wayfarer, here lies a love affair.”
Caught between anger and embarrassment, I shook Schultz by the shoulder:
– Take it easy! I said. And speak naturally! Can’t you spare us that ghastly language of melodrama?
– Not to worry, he responded. Romance has died: now it has its tombstone and epitaph. Now comes the shameful part.
– Go ahead and say it, if you’re man enough! the homunculus challenged him.
– It isn’t easy, Schultz admitted. We had just sat down to table in profoundly sentimental circumstances, when they brought in the first course. Keep in mind my emotional state: Tristan and Isolde, Hungarian violins, and so on. Suddenly, I see how this gentleman drops his harmless demeanour and brutally attacks the serving platters, empties them, licks them clean. Around me I hear voices, throats being cleared; everyone was trying to distract me from that astonishing spectacle. In vain. Fascinated, my attention is rivetted on Don Celso, who chews and devours, sucks bones and slurps up sauces, displaying a gluttony I haven’t seen in even the worst beasts. And quaffing libations whose generosity and frequency were enough to make a Knight Templar blush.
– Gentle souls! whined the priestly figure at this point.
The dapper old fop, who had been disdainfully holding his peace, clapped utterly incredulous eyes on Don Celso.
– Him? he asked.
– You’ve got it, Schultz affirmed. And just think, if he climbed down off his pot, he wouldn’t stand two feet off the ground. Well, when there were no more delicacies to wolf down and no more platters to lick clean, I see how this gentleman closes his eyes, saws off a few snores punctuated by gaseous belches, and sinks at last into the lethargy of a boa constrictor.
Don Celso seemed to have been measuring and judging each and every one of Schultz’s words as if they had nothing to do with him. Now he gestured approvingly:
– Not bad, he opined. A certain Homeric influence in the style, which will no doubt become more acute when this narrator tries to depict me as a modern-day Polyphemous. But please go on, Schultz, young man. I’ll admit your gift for comedy is irresistible.
The astrologer continued:
– That first revelation of the monster was not long in making its effects felt. It was as if a deep chill had fallen over the dining room, freezing the laughter and wilting the voices. I looked at Nora and saw her shrivel up beside me like a dry leaf. The sisters sizzled no longer (three extinguished torches). Mother dear had closed her eyes and was slowly crumbling beneath mournfully opaque jewels and faded lace. But listen up, now! Just at that moment the second course was brought to table!
Schultz opened a well-calculated parenthesis of silence. I waited for the end of the story as one awaits punishment. The water-closeted personages held their breath, and Don Celso’s forehead was already inclined, as if anticipating an ovation.
– I won’t describe, Schultz went on, the variety and nature of the delicacies of the second service. I’ll just say that as soon as he caught a whiff of food, this gentleman, whom we left apparently sunk in the deepest Nirvana, instantly stopped snoring and swaying like a pendulum. His nostrils flared with delight, and he cautiously opened two incredulous eyes. Convinced at last that neither smell nor sight was deceiving him, he smiled at the serving dishes, at the commensals, at the room, at the world. Right away the monster attacked again, as voraciously as before, but this time shouting enthusiastically, inviting us with fervent harangues – the oaf! – to imitate him. Whether the second course lasted an instant or a century, I don’t know. All I remember is that finally the monster, wineglass in hand, struggled laboriously to his feet, as though about to make a toast. But alas! No speech issued from his greasy lips, but rather the first bars of an operatic romance. And all of sudden, without warning, the fool collapsed on the table, knocking over glasses and smashing plates. His stiffened fingers clutched at the tablecloth, and his mouth chucked up intermittent jets of grunt, vomit, and laughter.
– Merciful God! wept the priestly figure. Lord, your own image and likeness!
– Bravo! Bravo! applauded the homunculus.
– I got up from the table, concluded Schultz, ran out of the dining room and away from the house. I never went back!
Don Celso looked at him now with ineffable sadness.
– Yes, he said. And to sum up: three withered orchids in a vase. And a poor girl dead from a broken heart . . .
– Dead? cried Schultz. Dead?
– Dead from a broken heart for exactly eight days, Don Celso clarified. Until my friend Tosto, the pasta manufacturer, opened his heart and his chequebook.
The astrologer sighed with relief:
– Ah, that’s so much like her! he said. In her hands, life was like a music box.
– I’d say more like a strongbox, gurgled the homunculus as he dozed off.
The absurd conversation with the toilet-bowl types seemed to be over. The astrologer Schultz was just signalling that he wanted to get a move on, when the priestly figure addressed us elegiacally:
– My beloved brethren in Christ, should the pressing demands of your excursion allow you sufficient time to hear another story, close not your ears to the one I wish to relate to you now, motivated not by literary vanity, but rather by the desire that its lessons may instruct and edify you, and render you fruitful in the virtue I lacked there above. Peccavi tibi, Domine! Mea culpa!
– Let’s hear him out, Schultz said to me. There’s nothing like travel for getting an education.
– My dear brothers, continued the priest. By the grace of God, I was the parish priest of San Bernardo, in industrious and proletarian Villa Crespo.
– This gentleman is from Villa Crespo too, said Schultz, introducing me.
The priestly figure observed me briefly and then shook his head:
– No, he rejoined. He’s too young. I’m referring to the idyllic era in Villa Crespo, before it received the colour of Israel.
– Colour and odour, Schultz blandly interrupted him again.50
The priest smiled through his tears, and continued thus:
– Gentle souls who listen to me, the Villa-Crespian flock of yesteryear was the one Our Lord entrusted to me, that I might watch over it, care for it, and lead it to the eternal meadows. To Him must I account for each and every one of my sheep when their hour arrives, as did He Himself to his Heavenly Father. “Tui erant, et mihi eos dedisti, et sermonem tuum servaverunt.” In the vernacular: “Thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word.”51 And now ye shall see, my brethren, how I lost the Lord’s sheep! Among the seven capital sins laying siege to man and obliging him to do battle, the one that fell to my lot was gluttony, a gross vice which like no other lowers man to the obscure level of the beast. If it be true that eve
ry vice has its demon, the demon of gluttony had enthroned itself in my innards such that, the more I offered him, the more he demanded. The demon was always awake and orienting my energy, my memory, my understanding, and my will toward food, at all hours and places. In my parish there were innumerable sick people to attend, widows to console, orphans to succour, and needy persons to help. Nevertheless, far from approaching those abodes of tribulation according to the injunction of Canonical Law, I frequented the houses of magnates in Villa Crespo, above all on those festive occasions (weddings and baptisms) that traditionally end with a lavish spread. There I could be seen realizing such gastronomic feats as disconcerted not a few burghers, who gazed in astonishment, forks suspended in mid-air. To be sure, the fasts imposed by the Holy Church on her ministers are not excessive. Nonetheless, such was the ingenuity I devoted to sophisms, cunning arguments, and ways of cheating those fasts, that I could easily have written another Summa Theologica.52 I said mass only at dawn, racing through the Missal toward a toothsome breakfast. Oftentimes, in the late afternoon, the penitent souls awaiting my absolution behind the grill of the confessional received nothing more than the snores and burps of my laborious digestion. The rest of my day, which was a fair amount of time, I dedicated not to reading the Holy Scriptures, but to rummaging through rare and beguiling cookbooks for some unique recipe, some Byzantine delicacy I might concoct on my stove; the aromas wafting from my kitchen throughout the neighbourhood provoked mockery among the sated, blasphemy among the hungry. Thus began the scandal in the Villa (“Vae mundo a scandalis,” the Lord has said).53 My blindness notwithstanding, it did not take me long to notice how my flock was dispersing, how the faithful were being lost, how even those who just yesterday would seek me out now avoided crossing my path. The day came when, if they ran into me, the women rushed to touch wood, the children to touch iron, and the men, by way of a preventive spell, surreptitiously touched their testicles. Alas, my brothers! It was as though they saw in me the devil himself and not a priest ordained according to the order of Melchizedek.54 The worst of it was that the hosts of error, aided and abetted by my terrible negligence, began to set up their rostrums in my parish and to judge the Lord by the unworthiness of His servant. Ay! It was then I saw how the Lord was being crucified a second time in Villa Crespo! For the second time, before my eyes, He was insulted at the corner where the tannery stands, scourged and spat upon at Lombardi’s sawmill, crowned with thorns in front of the stable of Ureta the Basque, nailed to the cross on the banks of the Maldonado . . .
The priestly figure’s speech ended in a huge sob. Burying his face in his hands, he wept soundlessly for a few moments. By and by, he pulled from his soutane a green handkerchief and used it to staunch his tears and noisily blow his noise. His pain was so sincere that even Schultz seemed to hesitate, as though turning over in his mind a question of justice. But then the old dandy, who up to that point had hardly intervened in the conversation, gave vent to his fermenting anger:
– Very well, he said. We’ve just heard the extremely vulgar stories of two “gourmands.” It seems to me there’s some justice in their being thrown into a hell such as this – what incalculably uncouth cuisine, upon my word! I still don’t know what someone like me is supposed to be doing here, a man who has turned cooking into an art with a soupçon of science or a science with a soupçon of art.
– Pardon me, Schultz said to him. Do I perhaps have the pleasure of speaking with a “gourmet”?
– You said it, the old duffer replied. And I assume the inventor of this inferno’s laughable architecture must be some kind of bungler, a moron incapable of seeing the nuances distinguishing one case from another. If I had the chance to go back up above for just a minute . . .
– What would you do?
– Nothing, crowed the old boy. I’d just call up Macoco Funes, the senator, and have him close down this clandestine den of iniquity.
Schultz was about to give him the response he deserved and maybe uncover a third story, when two enormous Cyclopes came striding down upon us, single mid-brow eyes beaming left and right as though in search of something in the semi-darkness. The one in the vanguard soon spied the three WC heroes and with amazing ease plucked them from their thrones. He tucked the priestly figure under one armpit, the old fop under the other, and with one hand held Don Celso in the air.
– Back to the grindstone! he told them. You’re not gonna sit on the john all night long like a buncha broody hens!
Then he noticed Schultz and me observing him with curiosity.
– Seleucus! he grunted to his companion. What’s this pair of patsies doing here?
– Rubberneckerth, for sure, lisped the other Cyclops in response. Leave’m to me, Chrythantuth!
In other circumstances I might have laughed out loud hearing those names of Attic sonority applied to such characters. One was a cyclopean low-lifer from the suburbs. The other put me in mind of a day labourer I’d seen tending to ten heifers roasting on spits, on that day we lost the elections and the frock coats took power.55 But Schultz raised a head radiating authority and turned to face Seleucus:
– You be quiet! he said. I’m the captain of this ship!
– Oh yeah? Seleucus guffawed, looking down at Schultz from above.
– He’s a patsy! insisted Chrysantus. Seleucus, give him a black eye!
Fury had taken the place of hilarity in the countenance of Seleucus:
– Leave’m to me, Chrythantuth! he shouted. I’ll make thith crowbait gallop!
– You be quiet and do as you’re told! Schultz ordered him again.
– Crowbait! yelled Seleucus. Lemme at’m, Chrythantuth! I’ll put the reinth on him!
At this point the three personages of the privy all piped up at the same time:
– A phone call to Macoco Funes! threatened the old fop, wriggling in one of Chrysantus’s armpits.
– Gentle souls! implored the priest from the other.
– Good afternoon, Schultz, young man! rumbled Don Celso, who had been nodding and dozing in the monster’s fist and was awakened by the uproar. How’s your precious health? Heads up, eh! Your bronchial tubes get congested, heart failure, and salute!
But the astrologer stood his ground. Looking at both Cyclopes at once, he said with some bitterness:
– Despicable wretches! I did you the favour of rescuing you from the junk bin of Mythology, where you languished like old bits of bric-à-brac, and gave you a destiny much better than you deserve. And what do the arrogant little pups do in return? That’s the Devil’s gratitude for you!
– You lie, varmint! Seleucus boiled over.
– Let’m have it, Seleucus! Chrysantus egged him on. Blacken his eye for him!
Without further ado, the heartless Seleucus grabbed us by the lapels, hoisted us up, and crushed us against his giant thorax. We resisted in vain; the monster scarcely noticed our punching and kicking. He had turned on his heels and was carrying us God knows where. That was when we started shouting for help:
– Ciro! cried Schultz in Italian. A noi!
– Aiuto, Ciro! I yelled at the top of my lungs.
Before long we heard the wrathful voice of Ciro Rossini, begging, suggesting, and threatening:
– Santa Madonna! Leave them alone, they’re from the barrio! A little party in famiglia!
Unfortunately, Seleucus wasn’t getting the message. He accelerated to a lively trot and squeezed us even harder against his agitated thorax, which was rising and falling like the sea. Now, the Cyclops trots rather like a camel, and the rider who by consent or constraint mounts such an unusual beast suffers oscillations and changes of level that he feels with particular sensitivity in the diaphragm. Frightened out of our wits, almost suffocating, and subject to the infernal rhythm of that gait, Schultz and I were suffering even more discomforts. The monster was panting up a windstorm that lashed us and blew a nasty smell of garlic up our noses; and his armpits reeked of old sweat, goatish emanations, and exhalations from a
lion’s lair. I can hardly say, therefore, how long our trip aboard the Cyclops lasted. All I remember is that suddenly Seleucus snatched us away from his teats and landed us beside what looked to me like the head of the banquet table. There, seated in a very high-backed chair, a lady was presiding over the feast.
The woman’s repugnant obesity was amplified by a sequin-covered evening gown bursting at every seam. She had a full-moon face, on one of whose two round cheeks thrived a very protuberant black mole. Her pug-nose, like a dog’s wet muzzle, was incessantly rising and sniffing; it was planted between two beady eyes that had trouble opening and seeing their way clear through the fat. Above her narrow, concave forehead rose a monumental hairdo adorned with mussels and prawns, pejerreyes and tinamous, sausages and blood puddings, asparagus, and bananas. A double chin joined her jaw to a non-existent neck; from there the contour-line soon took flight again to trace the formidable expansion of two bovine boobs, then dipped slightly where the umbilical region may have been, continued with increased brio to rise over the curve of an almost spherical belly, and finally plummeted, beneath the table, toward unknown though suspected depths. Massive and shapeless, the arms of that lady ended in two chubby little hands with short fingers sporting a gaudy ring on every last one of their phalanges.
Contemplating the woman, I understood that Schultz wanted to show me a personification of Gluttony. And I wondered if the astrologer was going to try to personify each and every one of the capital sins in his Inferno, though I doubted it (and with time my doubt was confirmed), taking into account his capricious genius, which rebelled against all symmetry. Meanwhile, the woman observed us for a moment and then turned to ask Seleucus:
– Officer, what are these young men doing here?
– Intruderth, answered the Cyclops. They rethithted a reprethentative of authority, and their paperth aren’t in order.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 55