– Just having a little fun! he pondered. A witty prank! I’m sure we didn’t get much money out of it.
– And the “prank” with the restaurant? I reminded him.
– I’ve forgotten it.
– The idea was to have someone eat at a high-class restaurant and get food-poisoning from the oysters or the paté de foie. The victim would inform the editorial room. Then, a phone call to the restaurant owner letting him know that, sadly, our journalist was duty-bound to publish the name of the establishment, and bingo . . .
– Trifles! he commented. Can’t even remember them. It was art for art’s sake. My masterpieces, on the other hand, will remain forever unknown.
– Don’t I know it. But I’ve seen the beleaguered characters filling your waiting room, day in, day out – bankers, politicians, criminals, professionals, shifty-eyed men – all on their way to see you, Boss, to beg for some venal discretion or a four-figure silence.
– Quite so. But people don’t realize how hard it is to milk the exceedingly tough udders of some consciences. And they have no idea of the sickening solitude one suffers afterward.
– I do. Sometimes I imagined you in your solitude like a movie gangster, the kind who sends his men out to commit a crime and then stays alone in his monumental office-suite, smelling the perfume of a gardenia, sensitively playing a Beethoven sonata on his concert grand. Do you remember Walker, Boss? The red-headed editor? He came up with a very poetic name for you: The Thief in His Forest of Bricks.127
– Walker was a sentimentalist, growled my Boss.
– According to what I hear, he died of revulsion.
– He died of dementia. He was one of those types who can’t take life’s hard knocks. So what of it? After all, everything goes on the same as always.
– No, Boss. It’s all coming to a close.
– To a close? he laughed, looking triumphally at the rotary press. Just look! The sixth edition is about to come out!
He lumbered heavily toward the end of the machine.
– Sixth! he was shouting. Sixth!
I was still watching him when a quite different character hove into my line of sight. He was an individual of dubious classification; he might have been a businessman, a movie actor, an amateur boxer, or all three in one. He was dressed ostentatiously, Yankee-style – baggy, grey-flannel trousers, sports jacket, loud tie. The mirth in his face did not quite conceal the sly gleam in his squinting, beady little eyes. The man looked me over for a good while, as if hesitating.
– Brother! he cried at last, opening his arms wide to receive me. I didn’t recognize you at first, but blood speaks louder than words . . .
– You mean ink, I corrected him. And don’t wax sentimental on me; I can see right through you.
– But, brother! he exclaimed in a wounded tone. Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill. I had no choice but to give you the sack: a newspaper is a newspaper, not a first-aid service.
– The night of the fire I was just following your damn lessons, I said.
– What lessons?
– The ones you used to give us guys in the newsroom every two weeks. I can still see you with the pointer in your hand, standing in front of a figure painted on canvas, which you said represented the Standard Reader. According to your doctrine, the Reader’s interests were arranged in the following hierarchy: first came the interests of his stomach (and your pointer would go to the figure’s belly); right after that, those of his wallet (and with the magisterial pointer you would indicate his pocket); next, those of his heart (and you would point to the flaming red heart of the figure); finally, the interests of his intelligence (and you would indicate the stylized brain of the Standard Reader). A good journalist, you taught us, was obliged to serve all those interests in the order established by your pointer.
– A good lesson! he exclaimed enthusiastically.
– A lesson I followed to the letter, even though it cost me my job.
– You followed it? protested the tabloid-man.
– Absolutely. I was fascinated by the smile of inexpressible imbecility on the Standard Reader’s face in your famous painting. Incredible as it may seem, his smile inspired in me such tenderness that I resolved to defend the Reader’s interests right down to my last drop of ink. And I got my first chance when I discovered the Saint Ignatius Dairy was selling watered-down milk or milky water. Understanding this as harm done to the Standard Reader’s first-level interests, meaning those of his stomach, I wrote an irate editorial that was never published . . .
Here, the tabloid-man guffawed obstreperously:
– You crashing idiot! he cried. Didn’t you know that the Saint Ignatius Dairy was giving us twenty columns’ worth of advertising a month?
– Your pointer failed to point that out, I said bitterly. The second time I applied your doctrine was when the streetcar companies tried to raise the fare. It was an insidious attack against the Standard Reader in his second-rank interests, those of his wallet; and, borne aloft by my righteous wrath, I wrote an editorial that never got the go-ahead from your red pencil.
– First-class pinhead! the tabloid-man qualified me. The streetcar companies were stockholders in our major daily.
– Your pointer didn’t reveal that in the pathetic figure of the Standard Reader. Now let’s move on to the night of the fire.
– That’s where I wanted to see you! the tabloid-man challenged me, not hiding his delight.
– The fire had broken out, and I went out in search of material for the report. Thanks to our powerful communications network, I arrived at the burning building before the firemen. Suddenly I heard shouts. Throwing myself into the fire, I was able to save a man. I pulled him clear of the flames and used my handkerchief to wipe the soot off his face. And whom did I find in that man? The Standard Reader himself! I felt something like the wings of glory graze my brow: with that humane act, how well had I defended the standard readers in their third-rank interests, those of the heart! I remember a suburban pharmacist disinfected my burns and, in admiration, filled my pockets with jellybeans. I returned triumphant to the newsroom, but dirty, beat-up, charred, and without a news report. Then I received news of my dismissal. And I left, swallowing my tears and my jellybeans.
The tabloid-man again laughed obstreperously:
– Great oaf! he said. Were you sent so you could show off in a rescue operation or so you could write a report? It was all your fault that we didn’t get the scoop on the fire.
– What about the Standard Reader I saved?
– The truly journalistic thing to do would have been to let him roast, and then write up two columns’ worth of weeping and wailing over him, headlined by a piteous groan in point-size seven.
– Monster! I shouted at him.
– And what did you do in the interests of the Standard Reader’s mind? the tabloid-man asked in a challenging tone.
– I had no chance to do anything, I answered. You had already taken it upon yourself to fill his brain with moronic cartoons, clichéd stories, insipid editorials, vapid maxims, sorry jokes, and photographs of naked actresses.
– What did you want me to do? Publish Aristotle’s Metaphysics in serial installments? No, brother! You failed because of your confounded lyricism. And I gave you plenty of warning!
– But you sure admired my lyricism when I wrote the obituary for the newspaper Founder’s death! Do you deny it made you weep with emotion?
– I don’t deny it. It was one rip-snortin’ elegy.
– And a lie from start to finish. The Founder was a miserable nobody. Fine. That night you crowned me with laurel leaves, but you refused to reimburse me for my supper.
– Eat supper? We were in mourning!
– And at the end of the month, you deducted money from our salaries to pay for a bust of the Founder.
– The Founder was a very thrifty Scotsman. That deduction must have given him pleasure beyond the grave.
– But the victims of the de
duction got their own back.
– How? he asked in alarm.
– For your information, every night, before leaving the paper in the wee hours of the morning, the reporters used to go over to the bust of the Founder and take him down off his pedestal; then they formed a circle and ritually pissed on him.
– You don’t say! exclaimed the tabloid-man. No wonder the bust has such a nice sheen to it!
A silence hardened between us.
– Do you still hold a grudge against me? the tabloid-man asked me at last, looking at me timidly.
– No, I answered him. After all, getting fired was only an economic annoyance for me.
My words plunged him into thought, as though he were weighing alternatives in an inner struggle. Then, apparently defeated, he dug into the pocket of his gaudy jacket, pulled out a well-worn billfold, and opened it before my eyes:
– Brother, he sighed, three pesos is all I have left. Take two, and leave me one for the streetcar.
I quickly reached around to the back pocket of his trousers and brought to light another wallet stuffed with bills.
– Thanks, I answered. I know the trick.
Confused, the tabloid-man snatched back the second wallet in a huff and ran to the end of the infernal rotary press. Then I looked searchingly at Schultz, anxious to leave that sector. But a third tabloid-man came to meet me; not without anxiety I recognized Walker the redhead, my unfortunate comrade-in-arms at the newsroom.128
– “I’m Walker the northerner,” he hummed in his madness. “My mother was a cardboard queen, my father a little tin soldier, with a heidy-heidy-ho!”
– With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho! I chimed in.
– Attaboy, comrade! laughed Walker. That’s how the chorus went!
And he hummed again:
– “Was he a poet or no, Buenos Aires never knew. What does she know, what will she know, what could she know, the City of the Tobiano Mare? A smithy of images, a turner of musics, a smelter of vapours, such was Walker the redhead, when his two cheeks were rosy yet, and springtime let’m touch her pretty knees, with a heidy-heidy-ho!”
– With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho!
Walker clapped sympathic eyes on me:
– We meet again, comrade! he laughed. May God keep you, brother.
And he took up his tune once more:
– “But one day along came an antimony devil and stood in Walker’s way: he was a daft wee devil, upon my word, a foolish devil not worth a farthing, oh. And yet, and yet, he led Red Walker astray, down from his ivory tower fair, to nocturnal tables in a newsroom-ho, where little leaden men ’neath mucilaginous lamps, turn and hone their little horse bun, that it may taint the pure threshold of dawn, with a heidy-heidy-ho!”
– With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho.
– “Walker the Red resisted, aye, that he did so. His music’s banner he was loath to surrender – God’s teeth! Never and no! But the antimony devil is tenacious (if notoriously cretinous), and he unravelled Red’s tunic of innocence, thread by gossamer thread, and with cheerful shears pruned Red’s lyrical shoots, all those buds that used to burst out of him. So Walker, deep down in the hole went he, and forgot the light above with its peacock tail; and night after night his wee horse bun he honed, with a heidy-heidy-ho!”
– With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho.
– “Till came a day when an aluminum angel alighted by Walker’s table and peered sadly at the redhead, who was clacking on his typing machine. ‘What hast thou done with thy soul?’ asked the Angel. ‘The antimony devil stole it,’ answered he. ‘You lie!’ cried the antimony devil who, beneath the gaze of the angel, twitched like the poor sod he was. Then Angel and Devil set to, they warred in words, a dialogue sublime that Walker heard in wonder. Then the Angel drew his sword and took off after the Demon: chased him all among the newsroom tables, and like a wee churchmouse the poor devil he squealed, with a heidy-heidy-ho.”
– With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho.
– “The Angel, he killed the Devil, killed him hard by the Director’s spittoon. And Walker the Red, now free as God’s little sparrows, leaned into his typewriter and wrote a sensational feature in praise of the dawn. But the noble steel string of his soul had rusted, and when plucked, it snapped with a Ping! Oh, and the noble string snapped with a Ping! – heidy-ho!”
– With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho.
Walker the Red had finished his song, and laughed uproariously.
– Good, good! he said. The brave comrade!
Suddenly serious, he looked right and left:
– Have you seen the Thief in His Forest of Bricks hereabouts? he asked me.
– He was around here, all right, I told him.
– I’m off to look for him, Walker decided. I want to suggest to him that, with Walker the Red, he blackmail the living God.
He joined the herd of tabloid-men. And then I felt Schultz take me by the hand and lead me out the door of the infernal shop.
The Slanderers, the Flatterers, and the Hypocrites had been lodged in the other residence. Their mise-en-scène was a vast field, similar to those where garbage is dumped and burned in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The astrologer’s fantasy, having interpreted Slander and Flattery as two forms of violence in polar opposition, had seen fit to conjoin slanderer and flatterer in a single monstrous figure, which as a whole gave the impression of Siamese twins. Joined at the thorax, the slanderer and the flatterer moved dissimilar arms and legs, trying to get them coordinated. Their two heads were separate, facing one another. The slanderer’s head, poisonous as a toadstool, was caustic in expression and oblique in gaze; the flatterer’s head was endowed with sensitive eyes oozing sweetness thick as jam. The twin monsters I’ve just depicted wore black on the slanderer’s half and white on the flatterer’s half. On their four arrhythmic legs, they went picking their way around little piles of burning garbage that gave off acrid smoke and no flame, or sinking up to their knees in the quaking bog of old tin cans, rotten boards, and barrel hoops. And even though the pervading smoke impeded visibility, I seemed to notice each of the monsters violently gesticulating in a dialogue between its two contradictory halves. In the same sector, though careful to avoid the monsters, roamed the Hypocrites: men and women of pious demeanour, downcast eyes, and clement smile, who wore long, rabid-yellow tunics trailing behind them through the fillth of the dump.
After a quick look around, the astrologer and I were just getting ready to skirt that zone of waste ground in search of better air, when one of the monsters, its two halves apparently in heated argument, approached us with its double head and its four badly coordinated legs.
– Take this gentleman, for example, said the adulatory half, pointing at Schultz. Could anyone who beholds him doubt that the gods have favoured him and granted him an illustrious lineage? One has only to observe his dignified bearing, his elegant lineaments, his delicate feet, and the ethereal hue of his complexion in order to realize that many refined generations have worked to produce this unique paragon.
The slanderous half of the monster turned venomous eyes on Schultz:
– All I can say about this man, he said, is that he has cast an impenetrable veil over his origins, a veil of romanticism that no doubt impresses fools, but which for the wise fails to dispel the certainty that some fundamental dishonour has rocked his cradle. The elegance of his feet is undoubtedly due to the astonishing fact that he manages to cram them into a size-eleven shoe, thanks to some trick recalling certain Japanese practices and causing him constant torture – all of which betrays his infinite vanity. As for his complexion, it didn’t come from any ancestral practice among the aristocracy; it’s the result of unspeakable habits, his addiction to staying up all night, and especially his weird diet; one suspects disgraceful cannibalism – the strangest stories are going around, and the police are already on the alert.
The adulatory half had listen
ed to his rival with visible displeasure:
– You only confirm my argument! he exclaimed, contemplating Schultz with sickly sweetness. It is now beyond dispute that the type of congenital degeneracy you think you see in this gentleman stands as the firmest guarantee of genius. There are men of science who maintain that every brilliant creation supposes a creator rotten to the core. If you look carefully at this gentleman, you will find the stamp of genius in the angle of his face, in his imposing cranial cavity, and in his frontal lobe, which I hope has not escaped your clinical eye. But in fact, external signs are not necessary to trace the virtues of genius which Nature, not always magnanimous, has deposited in this gentlemen, for those virtues sing sublime both in his writings – texts that have taken the world by storm – and in his awesome erudition in sciences both human and divine which, simply put, has made him the scourge of the Universities.
– Bull roar! cried the slanderous half at this point. His work is the clumsiest plagiarism committed since the invention of writing! And I crushingly demonstrated as much in the anonymous letters I wrote, modestly disguising my handwriting, to newspaper editors and directors of publishing houses. Moreover, the erudition attributed to this sinister personage is all second hand, picked up higgledy-piggledy from poorly edited books from Spain and dreadful French translations. Thanks to this dog’s breakfast of knowledge-scraps, and his facile memory, this so-and-so pretends to be a genius, a pose that has him cantering across the entire spectrum of the ridiculous.
– No way! protested the adulatory half, grabbing the other by the shoulders.
– Hands off! growled the slanderous half.
– In any case, insisted the adulatory half, it must be acknowledged this gentleman is an ideal husband, the self-sacrificing father of eleven vigorous scions, a man who has made his home in the very image of paradise; in sum, a citizen whose civic virtues shine in two exemplary records, one in matrimony and the other in military service.
– Nothing could be further from the truth! thundered the slanderous half. After shacking up with a woman in coarse concupiscence, this man soon abandoned her and led her into twisted paths. The ulterior motives of his actions qualify him as a born cuckold, as has been demonstrated in the anonymous pamphlets I liberally distributed throughout the neighbourhood. Needless to say, the eleven sons for whom this gentleman assumes a highly dubious paternity now live off public charity and are already sliding down the slippery slope of vice. As regards his civic virtues, suffice it to recall that this gentleman is an army deserter, has sold out to English gold, and profanes the electoral urns with the obscene drawings he slips into his ballot envelope, gloating malignantly.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 68