Adam Buenosayres: A Novel

by Leopoldo Marechal

  The announcer fell silent, the curtain came down, and we applauded coldly. Then, as the orchestra took up the same air as before but now in foxtrot time, the dancers began to dance again. Meanwhile, the announcer led us before a second stage.

  – Your attention, please! he cried again.

  Orchestra and dancers halted once more, and the curtain went up to reveal a second tableau:

  – Gentlemen, recited the announcer. As you will recall, we left Don Moses Rosenbaum in a humble tenement house on Warnes Street. Look at him now in the book-filled study in the mansion he’s built overlooking the gardens of Palermo.63 Ah, if you could look through the picture windows of his study, you’d see the cheerfully fuming smokestacks of his factories! But tell me: who are those twelve unanimous lads who have their twelve identical noses buried in as many books, atlases, and guides? They are the twelve sons of Don Moses Rosenbaum training to do battle by studying codes, itineraries, statistics, and languages! See how the proud father looks at them, as he scratches his beard gone grey, which releases not dandruff but powdered benevolence! And answer me this: doesn’t Don Moses look to you like a man who has realized his ambitions? Yes? Well, look out, then! Because Don Moses Rosenbaum, despite his satisfied air, already has one eye on the wheatfields by the coast and the other on the cattle herds in the south, one ear on the quebracho forests in the north, and the other ear on the mineral deposits in the west; his right nostril is already sniffing at the winepresses of Cuyo and the left nostril smells the sugar mills of Tucumán.64 But, hey there! What’s happening now? The twelve lads have just got up! See how they follow Don Moses’s nervous index finger as it traces routes on a map. Now they take out twelve identical suitcases, they put on twelve selfsame raincoats, and they head off in the twelve directions of the Argentine Republic! Curtain.

  A new round of cold applause was heard as the curtain descended. The dancers moved to the sempiternal music, which was now assuming the form of a tango. And again the announcer stopped them with his liturgical drone:

  – Gentlemen, he said, the curtain has just risen to reveal a third scene to your astonished gaze. You see the interior of a temple. Look at the twelve sons of Don Moses Rosenbaum, all standing by the baptismal font in the presence of grave witnesses who apparently have their foreskins intact, and receiving the redemptive water the way a person might take a dubious cheque! One thing’s for sure: the twelve lads wear their morning coats quite stylishly (take away a couple of the rings burdening their fingers, and they would be perfect). Now turn your eyes to Don Moses Rosenbaum and see how he sneaks a sidelong glance at the Crucified One. Did you catch it? Well then, that glance has got some pedigree: it’s two thousand years old. And you will ask me now, what angel or demon is at work on this tribe? My response: hmm, this business is making me very uneasy.

  The man with the megaphone stopped talking, and the dancers repeated their routine, breaking off when the fourth scene was unveiled:

  – Ah, gentlemen! recited the announcer. If you now see me waving, practically in your faces, the ever-sweet torch of Hymenaeus,65 do not think my heart exults with pleasure. Voilà the fourth scene! It’s the altar of a basilica: the twelve scions of Don Moses Rosenbaum are contracting marriage with as many young ladies from our high society. Aristocrats come down in the world, ruined families, illustrious lineages gone bankrupt, none have hesitated to sacrifice their finest buds for the sake of Mammon, if we may so rename Don Moses Rosenbaum, who stands by the altar sweating anguish (just look at him!), eyes popping out of his head, ears peeled, nostrils flared in order to ensure that the candles are burning properly, that the incense is the one agreed upon in the contract, that the organist isn’t skimping on the semi-quavers. But hell’s bells! Have you not just noticed the light has grown dimmer? It was Don Moses Rosenbaum who, on the sly, has just blown out the flames in the candelabrum. The wretch just can’t help himself! Ah, gentlemen, do not think my heart overflows with pleasure just because you see me lighting, almost under your noses, the not-always-so-sweet torch of Hymenaeus!

  The announcer headed for the fifth stage, as dancers and musicians resumed their roles. Then he brought the megaphone to his mouth, the curtain rose, and silence fell:

  – Well, gentlemen, said the annoucer. Here we are before a scene evoking, with no stretch of the imagination, the scandalous times of Babylon. See the banquet hall, soon to be stained before your very eyes by the violent hues of saturnalia! Who are those hosts, in their magnificence seeming to revive the bygone days of Asia? They are the twelve sons and the one hundred and forty-four grandsons of Don Moses Rosenbaum, now celebrating the splendour of their house! Splendour, did I say? Just look at those women! Are they not as beautiful as pagan goddesses? And in their refinement, is there not that painful je-ne-sais-quoi we sense in a flower at the moment preceding its demise? And look at those men! Are they not modelled on Ganymede? And does one not divine in their Byzantine elegance something ineluctably final? Gentlemen, heed my words: I have no wish to pass for a prophet, but I sense an invisible autumn descending upon this house. What does it matter! The wine flows in abundance, though without joy; the bacchanal now begins, and they are going through the motions without enthusiasm, as in a cold ceremony. But pay attention now! Do you not see that old man, wild-eyed, scruffy-bearded, unsteady on his feet, the one making his agitated way among the guests, the one nobody notices? Why, it’s Don Moses Rosenbaum! He has exhumed his ancient lustring frock coat and his astrakhan hat. See how his crazed gaze wanders over the banquet table! And observe how, in the face of such devastation, he tears tufts from his beard, weeps without a sound, raises his arms toward the ceiling, as though trying to prop it up? Great God, what’s he doing now? In his madness, the poor wretch has started gathering crumbs from the tablecoth, righting toppled glasses, and salvaging the spilled wine. But no one sees or hears him, and around him the debauchery intensifies. Look out, now! Ah, just as I feared! Don Moses Rosenbaum is standing still at last: he has torn a lapel from his frock coat, a savage shout bursts from his lips, and he flees . . . Heavens! But where? Up and over the footlights!

  Here the announcer hesitated in momentary confusion, as if something unexpected had happened. Then he began to vociferate, sans megaphone now:

  – Hey, Don Moses, the exit is backstage! Come back here to the stage, Don Moses! What the heck, this isn’t some avant-garde theatre!

  But his clamorous entreaties were in vain. The curtain had just come down on the bacchanal, and the musicians were trying to cover up the glitch by playing con brio the same old tune, tricked out now as a River Plate folk dance, while the dancers, lashed into a sudden frenzy, went round and round, stamping their feet like madmen, laughing and shouting, waving white-and-blue kerchiefs.66 Meanwhile, Don Moses Rosenbaum was crossing the room in the direction of the announcer:

  – Wastefulness! he cried, pointing at the orchestra. There’s two harps and three bagpipes too many!

  Barging through the circle of dancers, he ran toward the back of the room. But before exiting, he flipped a switch and turned out half the lights.

  – Let’s follow him, Schultz hastily told me.

  We reached the back door and entered what seemed to be a backstage area, with its gridiron, props, and drop cloths; we looked around among them for the fugitive, but in vain. We were eventually drawn by some light leaking underneath a door. Approaching, we pushed it open and saw what looked like a sixth stage, at the centre of which stood Don Moses Rosenbaum, as still as a plaster statue: a glaring spotlight illuminated his bust, highlighting his arid eyes, his rampant nose, and the hard lines of his mouth, which opened to hum the same lugubrious air the orchestra had been playing, but now restored to its true tonality of malediction or elegy.

  Leaving him to his terrible solitude, we left the mansion by way of the Egyptian facade. Up until then I had seen or heard so many images, persons, scenes, musics, and voices, all jouncing in such a crazy tangle, that they began to swamp my memory and overwhelm my im
agination. On top of it all, there was the travel fatigue, for my bones could not fail to know that, if Schultz’s Helicoid was generous in fantasy, it was hardly so when it came to convenience of passage. No wonder, then, I showed faint interest when the astrologer, still fresh as a rose, drew my attention to some geometrical constructions lined up along what looked like the last stretch of the spiral. These were great cylinders, cones, spheres, ellipses, and cubes, all painted red, yellow, and black (the devil’s liturgical colours); the vividness of the colours might have retained my attention, had it not been on the wane.

  – In this place, Schultz told me, there suffers a notoriously nauseating subspecies of humanity. It includes all those intermediaries, hoarders, and other such pests, who wedge themselves between the producer and the consumer, plundering both parties by means of a subtle chain of speculations, traps, ruses, and sleight of hand. You’ll see them in that red cylinder, up to their crotches in slime and covered with leeches.

  – Very equitable, I yawned.

  But I refused to enter the red cylinder, and started walking toward the exit.

  – This yellow cone, Schultz insisted as he drew even with me, is inhabited by those who react with alarm to a bumper crop and, being anxious to keep prices usuriously high, have burned silos brimming over with wheat, thrown tons of fruit into the Paraná River, and dumped wine into the sewers of Mendoza one year when every burro in the province got drunk contra natura.

  Despite my fatigue, Schultz’s words made me pause for a moment beside the yellow cone.

  – Look, I told him, my ancestors were enthusiastic drinkers (sometimes I wonder if my family tree mightn’t be a grapevine). And I think they’d all enjoy seeing, through my eyes, the torments being suffered here by those profaners of wine.

  – I’ve put them in a winepress, said the astrologer, pushing his advantage, where they eternally stomp rotten grapes to the sound of a sour, screeching, diabolical fiddle being scratched by a one-eyed fiddler from the province of San Juan, Vargas by name; day and night, standing on a keg in a state of demonic possession, he plays his moronic Malambo de la Cabra Tetona.67 Come and see!

  But I was dying to get out of that turn of the spiral:

  – No thanks! I answered. I don’t like solo fiddle music, and I can’t stand one-eyed men.

  I took off in flight at a quick pace. Schultz kept up with me and charged again:

  – In that black ovoid, he said, are the shopkeepers equipped with long fingernails and a short yardstick. Go on in and you’ll see them weighing an infinity of faecal materials, in scales as false as their smiles.

  – Not now! I refused again as I took the final bend at a trot.

  Schultz trotted alongside and, relentless as a horsefly, buzzed into my ear:

  – Don’t miss out on the best part of the suburb. Let’s go inside that cube, and I’ll show you the misers of comedy and literature: the ones who failed at music because they refused to give it so much as a rest, those who stayed on their feet because their legs refused to give way, those who brushed immortality because they refused to give up the ghost, and those who refused to give even a tinker’s damn. And those keepers so devout that they kept the sabbath every day, or those who adored only an angel called Keepsake. And those thrifty ones who went mute for the sake of not wasting breath on conversation, those on whom jokes were wasted, and who never wanted for not wasting, nor could ever be dubbed Waster. And those who . . .68

  – Enough, already! I shouted, speeding up to a full run.

  But Schultz in turn increased his pace and, swift as a greyhound, soon caught up with me:

  – Listen! he panted. I’ve put them all in filthy chicken coops and settled them in revolting nesting boxs, where they cluck and brood over their bags of gold, snivelling with fever, rheumy-eyed, flea-bitten, flatulent, and reduced to utter decrepitude.

  We were going along like this – with Schultz describing and me whinging and both of us running hell bent for leather – when I saw the exit door up ahead. Being the work of misers, and for the sake of not giving an inch, the door narrowed and shrank the nearer we drew. I made a dash for it, determined to get through the door no matter what, even if I had to dive through the keyhole. But just then I felt myself caught by someone who pushed me roughly toward a table that looked right out of some police station. In front of the table was a hard bench, and my captor forced me to sit down there. The astrologer Schultz, likewise captive, was soon sitting beside me. Only then did I see not only the two raving lunatics who’d hunted us down, but also a man behind the table who seemed to be observing us attentively, even as he adjusted on his cranium a gaudy brass crown.

  – What’s this pair doing here? asked the man with the crown at last.

  – Fugitives, answered the two lunatics in unison. They were only ten yards away from the exit.

  – They lie! shouted Schultz, getting up from his seat.

  A strong light was raining down on us from above. The astrologer sat down again and looked at me. And I looked back at him. Then the reason for our capture became obvious: looking at one another by the light of the beacon, we realized we were covered with the yellow dust so abundant in the Plutobarrio; without a doubt, we looked exactly like the rich slobs who inhabited the place.

  From that moment on, my memories are confused. My accumulated fatigue, plus the exertion of my last run and the tempting invitation of the bench all plunged me into a lethargy that made it impossible to keep my eyes open and no doubt had me snoring before long. Even so, I retain a vague memory of what happened before I fell completely asleep. First, Schultz turned to the man with the crown to declare that, “being who he was,” he enjoyed right-of-way through that inferno. To which the man with the crown answered: “You’re a liar and a yellow-bellied coward.” And Schultz, more offended by the overly familiar form of address than by the insult itself, asked him “since when had they been eating mazamorra from the same plate.” Only later did I hear from Schultz how the incident ended. The crowned man turned out to be King Midas, the famous plutocrat now fallen on hard times, and he demanded that Schultz undergo questioning to prove he wasn’t a fugitive if he wanted to get out of that spiral with weapons and baggage intact. Schultz accepted and took an exam which, as he later assured me, resulted in an exemplary display of pedantry on both sides.

  – Do you think, Mr Midas had asked him, that the iniquities and depradations committed by the so-called bourgeois class, or third estate, warrant its being amputated from the social body?

  – No, sir, Schultz had answered. Because by calling it the “third estate,” we are already saying it belongs among the others and in third place. Now, every class or estate is an organ with a distinct but equally necessary social function; and if we were to eliminate a given class, we would be left without one of those functions.

  – Tell me what the third estate’s function is.

  – To produce material wealth, said Schultz. And let us now recognize that the ugly bourgeois have been born with this vocation: they discover sources of abundance where most people wouldn’t see so much as a blade of grass.

  – That sounds rather like praise, Mr Midas came back. So what are we to reproach them with?

  – I do not want to insult your intelligence, Schultz replied, by reminding you that when a bodily organ, the stomach for example, fulfils its function, it does so for the good of the entire body, because the continued health of the former depends on that of the latter.

  – A comparison as old as the hills! Midas rebuked quite scornfully.

  – It’s old but still valid, Schultz shot back. Because if the bourgeoisie is the organ that innately corresponds to the economic function, it ought to fulfil its role for the benefit of the whole social body.

  – By what law?

  – Many, said Schultz. Would you admit the bourgeois are human?

  – Hmm! growled the crowned man inconclusively.

  – If they’re human, Schultz argued, they are subject to the great
Law of Charity or Loving Intelligence; and they ought to obey it voluntarily by making sure the wealth resulting from their vocation gets to all those among us who do not have it.

  – But they don’t obey that law, said Mr Midas. Therefore, they are not human.

  – Let’s say they’re stupid brutes, persisted the astrologer. Even so, they would obey the instinct for self-preservation by assuring that material goods are distributed throughout the social body to fortify it. Because the preservation of one organ is subject to the preservation of the total organism.

  – Enough of the organ, already! Mr Midas grumbled again. The bourgeois don’t follow the instinct of self-preservation, either. Therefore, they are not even brutes. What are they, then?

  – There’s the rub! sighed Schultz. Every social estate or class has a virtue and an opposing vice. If its virtue prevails over its vice, the class will act justly. Otherwise, it won’t be long before its vice will lead it downhill into iniquity. In the third estate, the virtue of producing wealth is opposed by a fatal tendency toward selfishness and usury. That’s why Brahma (be he a thousand times praised!), who understood that the bourgeois, left to his own devices, would obey no law at all, placed him in the third rank of the hierarchy, so that the two upper estates might rule over him with a firm hand.