– That’s slander! roared the adulatory half, seizing the other half by the neck.
– Naturally, said the slanderous half, likewise clutching his antagonist around the neck.
They tumbled to the ground in a single thrashing snarl, snapping at each other like dogs in a fight. And while contemplating the monster’s wrestling match, we were approached by a woman wearing the cloth of hypocrisy. She was clearly an old relic, chastely garbed in a yellow tunic and festooned with infinite medals, scapulars, and crosses. Her left hand found support in a little ebony cane with an ivory handle; her right hand held an enormous rosary of corks.
– Brothers, she said in a humble voice. Might there be a church, a chapel, or an oratory nearby?
– Oh, boy! I observed to Schultz. It’s that annoying old bag who used to plant loud, sloppy kisses on the images of San Bernardo; the one who used to distract me during the Elevation by noisily beating her breast and generally showing off; the one who would lunge for the communion rail like a famished tiger, kicking and elbowing her way among the resigned parishioners.
The old woman humbly lowered her eyes, in which two big, glassy tears were gleaming:
– Brother! she whined. Forgive me if my excessive piety hindered your prayer! I am a great sinner: the world’s dross. Nevertheless, the Apostle counsels us to tolerate one another in the spirit of Christian charity. Are we not all brothers in the Lord?
– So were the poor martyrs who fell into your money-lending clutches, I told her.
The old woman crossed herself devoutly:
– By the body of the Lord with whom I’ve communed this morning, she whimpered, I swear I never demanded more than twenty percent.
– Not much, I admitted. But what was the point of your exhibitionism? On your way out of the temple you would drop small coins into imploring hands, caress the faces of children, and hold out your right hand as if blessing the suburb.
– God will bear it in mind, the pious woman predicted.
– No doubt. Along with the dreadful state of hygiene in your tenement buildings, for which the same suburbanite tenants whom you blessed were paying onerous monthly rents. But let’s move on to another matter, the way you used to walk down Gurruchaga Street: why the need to strut your affectations, your air of disgust, your fussy prudery? And every time you heard the Carter from the Hayloft crooning a tango at the barbershop door, did you really have to make the sign of the cross, as if hearing the song of the devil? And why the need to mercilessly scrutinize young girls’ hemlines or necklines when they flaunted their sheer youth in front of you? Was it necessary to look earthward, sobbing “good grief!” and striking your breast, when the nymphs in the zaguán were frolicking all hot and bothered?
– It was the street of sin! wept the old woman. “Woe to him who causes my children to stumble” sayeth the Lord.129
– Certainly. But what about your intimate get-togethers with Mistress Chaste and Madame Pure? Didn’t the three of you wolf down gobs of cookies soaked in sweet wine, and afterward hike up your housecoats and dance on your arthritic legs as if possessed?
At this, the old woman got so perturbed that she dropped her rosary of corks:
– That was in private! she stammered. An innocent game. The Lord sayeth: “Become as little children.”130
– But He doesn’t say: “Spy on your neighbours with opera glasses.”
– I don’t what know you’re talking about, she retorted in a quavering voice.
– It invariably followed the wine and dancing. You and Mistress Chaste and Madame Pure (what a lovely threesome!) would train your opera glasses on the neighbourhood, hoping to catch intimate scenes being played out in hovels and outhouses. “Oh, my!” stuttered Miss Chaste. “Tsk, tsk,” sobbed Madame Pure. “Incredible!” you would whine, desperately adjusting the focus.
– False witness! cried the old woman, putting her thumbs in her ears.
She looked around in dread:
– Is there not a church, a chapel, or an oratory around here? she asked again.
And off she wandered through the dump, her yellow tunic wrapped tightly around her.
As we left that sector and entered the following one, I thought I detected in the astrologer a certain quizzical look typical of artists who, being not quite satisfied with a piece of work, hesitate to display it. Nevertheless, and in happy contrast to the garbage we had just left, the new environment was decked out in all the poetic colours imaginable. No doubt it was, or aspired to be, a version of the Elysian Fields in the classical style. Verdant hills, blue brooks, glades generously laden with fruit and orchestral with birds, all befriended the eyes and caressed the ears. Men and women, crowned in laurel leaves and draped in majestic Greek robes, were conversing here and there, or joining in demure circles. Such was the intruder’s first impression of those gardens. But, after the initial fascination, the interloper soon noticed that an absolute falseness ruled the entire scene: the streams and hillsides were of painted canvas, the trees of bristol board; the lights were neon, the nightingales trinkets. As for the denizens of that Eden, a similar disillusionment ended by reducing them to a troupe of actors wearing paper clothes and gilt-cardboard diadems.
– Can you guess what sector we’ve entered? asked a still-hesitant Schultz.
– I don’t know, I replied. Who could these tinsel figures be?
– No offense, but I call them the “artistically violent.” I conceived this sector as a false Parnassus, where the pseudogogues metaphorically display their peacock tails, under the direction of the false muses or Antimuses, as I’ve named them.
I must admit, it was with profound displeasure that I anticipated our tour of this sector. Already I’d been finding it abusive that, against all custom and usage, the comfortable role of rubbernecker, which by rights should have been mine in this descent into hell, was being distorted; which meant I’d been getting railroaded into dialogues, controversies, and arguments I had no taste for, thus becoming just one more actor in Schultz’s farce. And if this had been happening to me among strangers, how uncomfortable were things going to get among the men of my own métier who squirmed in this new environment? Truth be told, my own tail of straw made me vulnerable.131 And knowing Schultz’s taste for the freakish, I was already fearing that the Antimuses might be a new version of the Bacchantes who tore Orpheus apart. Nevertheless, aware that resistance was futile, I followed the astrologer, who was already penetrating deeper into the cardboard Parnassus.
The first contingent of pseudogogues (as Schultz called them) was led by the False Euterpe,132 an elderly spinster wearing a sky-blue peplum that imperfectly disguised the boniness of her frame. Her unhealthy complexion, the bitterness in her face, and the look of irritation in her rheumy eyes were all telltale signs of incurable constipation. And to complete her misfortune, she was constantly hacking and coughing up greenish phlegm into a handkerchief of indefinite colour. Seeing us, the False Euterpe came to a halt. Her tunic-clad circle of followers likewise stopped. Then, as I was warily giving the group the once-over, who should I see front and centre among the pseudogogues but our fast friend, our illustrious and never-sufficiently-praised comrade, Luis Pereda! I thought I was going to choke with indignation:
– This isn’t right! I told Schultz. Sure, according to venerable tradition, the inventor of an Inferno enjoys the right to put his enemies in it; it’s been common practice up to the present. But if the creator of an Inferno brought a friend in on the act, it was to give the friend a chance to look good in a smart role. So, what need was there to inflict upon our comrade Pereda the ignominy of showing up in this bordello?
– For all the times I’ve paid his streetcar ticket! growled Pereda, looking rancorously at the astrologer.
At this point the False Euterpe intervened, and through her catarrh she cried thus:
– He lies through his teeth who claims that Don Luis has been unjustly acommodated in this inferno!
– What’s he accused of
? I asked her.
– Don’t pay any attention to the scarecrow! Pereda warned me, jerking a thumb toward the false goddess. She’s a dirty trick Schultz cooked up, a German joke in the worst taste. If I ever run into him at the corner of Pampa and Tronador,133 I’m going to give him a couple o’ shiners!
The False Euterpe made a noise, a sort of gargled chuckle.
– That’s the remarkable thing about Don Luis, she told me. He stands accused of wandering around the barrios of Buenos Aires playing the malevo, his bully-boy glances slanting off left and right, spitting between his teeth, and muttering the poorly learned lyrics of some tango.
– A personal gesture that does no one any harm, I retorted.
– Exactly. The trouble is, Don Luis wanted to give literary expression to his mystico-suburban fervour; he went so far as to invent a false Mythology in which the malevos of Buenos Aires acquire not only heroic proportions but even vaguely metaphysical dimensions.
I gave her a hard look:
– For that virtue alone, I told her, my distinguished comrade Luis Pereda deserves the laurels of Apollo.
– Your reasons, please? demanded the False Euterpe.
– Has it not been said that a heavy cloud has been hanging over our literature, a tendency to imitate foreign models? It’s been said, you can’t deny it! And when a man like Pereda goes out and vindicates the right of the criollo spirit to ascend to the universal plane of art, he gets mocked and ridiculed and subjected to infernal indignities. Well, Madame, I bow before our champion; and I’d reverently take off my hat to him, if I hadn’t lost it somewhere in this damned Helicoid.
– Thank you, my people! cried Pereda, visibly moved. When I get out of here, I’ll buy you a gin at the pink general store on the corner.134
But the False Euterpe insisted:
– Even if we admit that our patient is a brilliant innovator. Does that circumstance give him the right to geld the words of our language and write soledá for “soledad” and virtú for “virtud,” or pesao for “pesado” and salao for “salado”?135
– An idiomatic prank! I retorted. An artist’s capricious snip of the shears. He comes by his taste for gelding honestly, from his rancher forefathers.
– Fine, admitted the false Muse. But then there are his neologisms. This gentleman has had the cheek to coin terms like “tile-floorishness” and “cisternism” and “bannisterdom” that scream bloody murder.
– Have you ever read Horace? I asked.
– Horace? she said. I didn’t know he was a writer. An upstanding young man like him!
– Not that one! I griped. The Horace I’m talking about gives bards licence to introduce neologisms galore.
The False Euterpe was about to answer me, when a pseudogogue wearing a rather pompous purple tunic intervened:
– Gentlemen, he declaimed in a resentful tone, I think it unfair to distract these noble tourists with the literary romps of a writer (and he pointed at Pereda) who, they say, hasn’t got beyond the narrow confines of grammar. In all modesty, I believe there are geniuses worthier of human attention among those of us gathered here.
– That’s right! Bravo! a few voices piped up.
– A little composure! shouted the False Euterpe. This isn’t the Café Tortoni.136
I turned to her:
– Who’s Purple Tunic? I aked. The fellow who’s just expressed himself with such exquisite taste?
– He of the pedestrian metaphors, answered the false Muse.
Levelling a powerfully ungulate index finger at him, she declared:
– This gentlemen has fallen into the reprehensible mania of stringing together comparison after comparison, with no restraint whatsoever, and against the fundamental dictates of prudence.
– So what? I shot back. Isn’t figurative language the best kind for poetry?
– It all depends on the figures, in my opinion. This gentleman, for example, has hung on the hanger of his heart the grey overcoat of melancholy; and with alarming frequency he has donned and doffed the nightshirt of hope. He has compared his love, succesively, to an automatic bar, a box of matches, and a pair of boots. Now he has muffled himself in the warm blanket of doubt, and no power in heaven could make him climb aboard the streetcar of mystery.137
I looked at Purple Tunic with a fraternal gaze:
– Sir, said I, through metaphor we attempt to express the subtle relationship we find between two different things. But it won’t do to bring what is superior down to the level of the inferior; rather, through comparison, we must bring about the ascension of the inferior to the level of the superior. To compare the sky with a water-closet is to offend the sky and heap ridicule on the water-closet.
– So what are we supposed to do? grunted the fellow in purple. Compare the water-closet with the sky so as to make the water-closet rise up to heaven? And anyway, look who’s talking! A parrot of the new generation who has mortified us with the most absurd metaphors. Wasn’t it you who wrote that line about “love more joyous than a child’s funeral”?
Here I turned every colour of the rainbow:
– Look, I told him, it may be a risky comparison, but it has a hidden folkloric meaning.
– It’s nonsense! shrieked the Tunic. Moreover, did you not dare to say that “your sky is round and blue like the eggs of a partridge”? And since when do partridges lay blue eggs? Haven’t you told a woman that “in the climbing vines of her voice, a bird of grace broods over three little eggs”?138 Please understand, sir, that so many eggs are hard on the Muse’s liver!
– How’s that? growled the False Euterpe, giving me a dangerously curious look. This gentleman has written all that?
– And more, answered the Tunic. This young versifier who goes around censuring other people’s style has had the nerve to praise a lady by saying her smile was “as pleasant as the death of illustrious uncles.”139
The False Euterpe stopped looking at me to fix two questioning eyes on Schultz:
– Shouldn’t we add him to my entourage? she asked him.
I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead. And it got worse when I saw the astrologer silently looking me up and down as if taking my measurements for a tunic.
– A case of youthful measles! I uttered in fright. And who hasn’t gone through it? Believe it or not, by putting the most heterogeneous things in relation to one another, I wanted to emancipate them from their narrow ontological limits so they could take on other forms and other meanings.
– This gentleman is raving! exclaimed the False Euterpe, pointing at me. Bring him a peplum, the straightjacket model!
– It’s a fatal error! interjected somewhat bitterly a tunicked pipsqueak, two cardboard wings sprouting from his shoulders. Woe to him who profanes art with the idle game of forms!
Everyone looked at him, and my soul was filled with gratitude for the intervention of this new character who was attracting the curiosity of the assembled company.
– Woe to him who offends the hierarchies of art! proclaimed again the tunicked pipsqueak.
– You be quiet! the False Euterpe ordered him.
And turning to us, she spoke thus:
– This poetaster, who decorates his shoulders with fake wings, has a mania for putting his art at the service of a kind of cheesy mysticism that has angels and archangels flapping all over the place.
– And why not? adduced the pipsqueak. The angels are with us: woe to him who senses not their invisible presence!
– Candle-sucker! a fellow in a red tunic shouted at this point.
– Silence! growled the false Muse. I haven’t finished yet with the tunicked pipsqueak. It’s fair to say that his commerce with angelic creatures wouldn’t be so bad, if at the same time he didn’t go in for theological digressions and symbolisms that God himself doesn’t understand. Especially the symbolism of numbers. This bard has contracted a strange and baneful passion for the number seven: he sees and explains everything in sevens.140
– It�
�s a sacred number! exclaimed the pipsqueak, swooning in ecstacy.
The fellow in the red tunic who had just spoken now stepped forward angily. I recognized in him a libertarian poet from Boedo Street.141 Pointing at the pipsqueak, he cried:
– Don’t pay any attention to him! He’s a sanctimonious Holy Joe working for the bourgeoisie!
– And you? the false Muse asked him, studying him carefully.
– I put my art at the service of social justice, answered Red Tunic.
– That’s turning the hierarchy upside down! scolded the angelic pipsqueak. There is a hierarchical order of values obtaining among human activities, and it would be dangerous to destroy it. By virtue of its transcendence and universality, the metaphysical plane is superior to the artistic, and the artistic is superior to the political. Art can serve metaphysics without lowering itself, since by doing so it rises to a higher sphere. On the other hand, by serving any activity of lower rank in the hierarchy, art loses its freedom and falls into the servitude of the inferior.
– Rubbish! exclaimed Red Tunic. Like I just said, he’s a well-known Holy Joe.
At this point, forgetting the norms of caution I’d imposed upon myself, I again intervened in the debate.
– If I’m not mistaken, I said turning to the astrologer, the tunicked pipsqueak has hit the nail right on the head. And I’ll go further: if he gave his thickets of angels a good pruning and lopped off a few number sevens, I do believe the tunicked pipsqueak would deserve a promotion in this Helicoid.
My words produced a disastrous effect:
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 69