– Why are these men here,? said Dr Aguilera, looking at us askance. What are they doing here if their livers are in good shape?
The astrologer Schultz contemplated him unkindly:
– Dr Aguilera, he said. Have you forgotten a certain Señora Ruiz?
– A colossal specimen, recalled the little man as the nurse put two frightful surgical boots on his feet. Señora Ruiz may have looked timid, but she has given science the most disconcerting faecal bolus seen this century.
– Enough of the faecal bolus, grunted Schultz. Dr Aguilera, did you not poison that lady’s mind?
– How?
– Did you not declare, strutting before her like a peacock, what you would or would not have done if, instead of God, it had been up to you to organize the human body? Finding fault with the Creator – you, a dime-store demiurge!
Here Samuel Tesler laughed again, shaking his horned head:
– Dr Aguilera, he said. Describe for us your famous artificial heart with seven valves, or your gutta-percha lungs with the reinforced buttonhole.
But Dr Aguilera wasn’t listening for, at that moment, with all the majesty permitted by his stature, he was suffering the nurse to enfold him in a snow-white surgical gown.
– Liturgy? Schultz asked him bitterly. I see now the information I had was correct. Did you not reckon on how Señora Ruiz’s simple head would be turned by your surgico-religious ravings? Just thinking about it, I hardly know whether to laugh or cry. You imagined you were the Grand Priest of a cruel but necessary rite, and said as much. What a delicious shiver ran down Señora Ruiz’s vertebrae when you spoke to her of the Grand Priest’s morning preparations, your ritual shower, your pompous donning of the sacred robes – the surgeon’s boots, the virgin gown as yet unbloodied, the ominous gloves, the theatrical surgical mask – all reverently served up by acolytes mute as stones! All that was missing was the incense and organ music.
– No pipe organ, but I do have my piano, said Doctor Aguilera as he pulled on his surgical gloves. As for the incense, you’ve given me an idea and I’ll think it over in due course. Although I’d prefer Oriental sandalwood burning in censers.
Dr Aguilera was now fully dressed. At a silent order from the nurse, the pianist began to play the March from Handel’s Theseus. Dr Aguilera coldly saluted. Then, making an “O” with thumbs and index fingers, he proceeded as stately as a Grand Priest toward the elevator, already being opened by the nurse. As if communing with himself, Dr Aguilera stopped for moment at the door, then stepped inside. But the nurse, as though she’d forgotten an important detail, ran to snatch a rose from the vase on the piano, then rushed back to the elevator to hold it beneath the doctor’s nose. Hermetic, solemn, Dr Aguilera inhaled the rose’s perfume. Slowly the metal door closed: enclosed within the box, Dr Aguilera rose like a star in the heavens.
Back we went to the main room. The rumpus was over and done with, and the scalpel-operators had gone back to work. The bronze door invited us to vacate that slaughterhouse, and so we left it behind, on our way to new revelations of which I hadn’t yet the slightest inkling.
The fourth building Samuel showed us was non-descript on the outside, its architecture grey and neutral. But then the hornèd philosopher had us push our way through swinging doors like the ones in neighbourhood movie houses, and we found ourselves in an area of orchestra seats crammed with people silently waiting in front of the stage, its curtain drawn. Schultz, Tesler, and I went up to the front row and sat down in Pullman seats that wheezed and sighed under our weight. We were still getting settled, when a little man in a tuxedo came out on the proscenium and bowed:
– Ladies and gentlemen, he said, in a moment I’ll present to you the famous ventriloquist Professor Franky Amundsen, with his no less famous automaton Homo Sapiens. I hardly need draw your attention to the mastery of the one and the brilliance of the other, since man and puppet have conquered both continents, earning tremendous ovations, record box-office sales, and high praise in the press. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please!
I promptly turned to Schultz and whispered in his ear:
– Didn’t we leave our comrade Franky in the Hell of Violence? Can he play a role in two places at once?
But the impresario left the proscenium, the public stirred in their seats, the curtain went up, and a truly deafening round of applause greeted Franky Amundsen. He came on stage dressed in tails, his face heavily powdered and looking more severe than solemn, carrying under his left arm a large puppet with moveable joints.
– Gentlemen, he said, the automaton I am honoured to introduce to you looks nothing like those hideous scarecrows169 that some colleagues, against the dignity of our art, are wont to offer up to public derision in shabby little theatres. Gentlemen, in building my automaton, I’ve endeavoured to incarnate a mystery, the mystery of Homo Sapiens, that humble simian who, after a great deal of crawling around, one fine day got to his feet, raised his brow to the heavens, and soared to the loftiest heights of intelligence. Here you have Homo Sapiens: listen to him and be amazed. No need to fear fainting from the wonder of it, because in the vestibule we have a certified nurse standing by with first-aid kit and all, at the service of our honourable spectators.
Ignoring the fresh round of applause from the multitude, Franky Amundsen sat down on a stool, put the automaton on his lap, and felt around on its back for the hidden springs. The audience waited ecstatic; you could have heard a pin drop.
– Homo Sapiens! the ventriloquist addressed his puppet at last. Say hello to our audience!
The automaton raised his head, revealing a face in which a certain indefinable malice was depicted, then let his blinking eyes roam over the room.
– What’s this buncha good-for-nothings doing here? Why’re they gawking at me like I was from another planet?
– Say hello, Homo! insisted Franky.
– A gang of good-for-nothings! grumbled the puppet. Lemme at ’em so I can punch their lights out!
And, just like that, he tried to leap free into the audience. But Franky Amundsen held him back in mid-air and restored him to his knee. Settled once more, the automaton again let his gaze sweep over the spectators, as though looking for something. Suddenly he turned to Franky, gave him an unwholesome wink, and crowed in his ear:
– Did you get a load of the babe in the front row? What a pair of legs!
– Behave yourself, Homo! Franky reprimanded. We’re here to work.
– Lemme go chat her up! begged the puppet, and for the second time he tried to jump off the stage.
Meanwhile, the public was showing signs of great excitement. Noticing this, Franky Amundsen firmly placed the automaton on his knee and spoke to him thus:
– So, Homo, why don’t you treat these ladies and gentlemen to a few of your impressions of the Neozoic Era.
Obediently, Homo Sapiens arranged his facial features into an expression of innocent and crass bestiality.
– Me, Jumbo, poor monkey, he pronounced thumping himself on the chest. That Orang-utan real nasty: him eat bananas all day long and all day long make coochie-coochie with real pretty females, oooh! That Orangutan big tyrant: him no let Jumbo eat bananas, no let Jumbo make coochie-coochie, oooh! So Jumbo eat oysters and give shelled nuts to females. So Jumbo eat and Jumbo make coochie-coochie, oooh! That Orang-utan real stupid – him never become man.
He paused suddenly at this point, and resuming his normal demeanour, he cried out to one of the spectators:
– Hey, bub, gimme a tip on Sunday’s races!
– Gentlemen, explained Franky gravely. The exciting story my ward was recounting has just experienced some interference from civilization. You must have guessed that Jumbo and Orang-utan are two actors in the sublime drama of prehistory: Jumbo is the progressive monkey and Orangutan is the retrograde ape. Just imagine the incredible effort Jumbo had to make to finally arrive at the Morse Code! No doubt about it, it’s enough to bring tears to your eyes!
H
ere the ventriloquist pulled out a great purple handkerchief and daubed his weeping eyes. Religiously, with scientific decorum, the whole audience sobbed tenderly. Then Homo Sapiens winked at the blonde in the front row:
– Don’t cry, sweetie! he cried. I’ll take you out to the Pigalle: drinks, dancing, and “et cetera,” like that Frenchy used to say. And you, ya buncha namby-pambies, knock it off with the waterworks! Holy smokes, you’d think we were at a funeral!
After saying which, the puppet turned to Franky:
– Hey, how ’bout we blow this popstand and go get some drinks.
– Well then, gentlemen, announced Franky. Homo is now in the thick of civilization. But thanks to my art, we’ll make him go back to the time of the cavemen. Listen up, Homo! We want a scientific account.
The automaton sat up straight on Franky’s knees. He looked around, at once fierce and tender. Then he exclaimed:
– Brrr! I – Ach – draw reindeer on cave wall. Woman no sweep cave, woman let flank of mammoth burn, brrr! Woman covered in furs, still wants furs. Woman shave legs with flint knife. Ach hungry: mammoth flank burnt, brrr! Ach pick up club, Ach hit woman, Ach furious. Woman cry, woman sweep cave, woman roast mammoth flank. Ach eat, Ach give furs to woman, Ach draw reindeer in clean cave.
The puppet stopped talking, and Franky smiled at the enthralled public:
– Ah, gentlemen, what a portentous scene and what an admirable lesson in psychology we’ve just received from Ach, the primitive man. Very good, Homo! And now, tell them about the final stage. Dazzle them with the science of Homo Sapiens! Let them bust a gut in amazement!
The automaton cleared his throat, adopted an air of sovereign intelligence, and spoke thus:
– Okay, guys, here goes the speech. Want some advice? Don’t get your knickers in a knot; just take things nice ’n’ easy. What ya gotta do is salt away a few bucks. A nice apartment, a blonde on the side, and an eight-cylinder car to pick up broads in, that’s the life. Did I say something? If you wanna know my opinion, French cuisine ain’t what it used to be, vitamin-wise. Take care of your stomach, and the rest is literature. Stick with permanganate until they discover sulfonamides. Listen, guys . . . !
– Enough! ordered Franky, covering the puppet’s mouth.
– Watch out for the spirochaetes!170 concluded the automaton in a strangled cry.
At that moment, Samuel Tesler got to his feet and, with all eyes on him, spoke thus:
– Ladies and gentlemen, I would be remiss in my duty if I were to endorse through guilty silence the vile things just said here. The individual calling himself Professor Amundsen is a knave of the worst ilk, a blasphemous puppeteer who, respecting neither the divine nor the human, brazenly traffics in his own shamelessness and the naivety of others. He’s as much a professor as I am an archbishop: truth be told, this two-bit actor scarcely got past the ABCs of even rudimentary studies; and his readings have never gone beyond the detective genre, which is no doubt where he acquired the abominable penchant for truculence you’ve just witnessed.
Hearing such harsh words, the audience was stunned. And Franky Amundsen, leaving his automaton on the floor, seemed to fall into deep sadness:
– Fine, he sighed at last. That’s how the artificer is rewarded, gentlemen! Rack your brains to come up with a work of art! Bust your ass studying the most obscure sciences! Then, sure enough, some benighted bonze will come along and spit most foully on the delicate rose of genius!
More sad than indignant, Franky got to his feet, picked up his automaton, and put him under his arm:
– Gentlemen, he concluded, pointing at Samuel Tesler. That man and I cannot be in the same room.
And he initiated an extremely honourable exit. But at last the audience reacted: they exploded into irate shouting and shook menacing fists at Samuel, who was yelling back without being heard. At that point, the astrologer and I stood up. Taking the hornèd philosopher in tow, we dragged him away kicking and screaming as we fled the hall and the hissing and booing of the crowd.
Once we were back out on the street, I refused to visit any more infernal buildings. In the last two, we had again encountered a violence I didn’t like, and I told Samuel so, in polite but no uncertain terms. Hearing this, the philosopher guided us into a garden or park filled with flowers so oversized as to quite astonish me. We were looking for the way out of the garden, and thought we’d found it, when a gigantic insect landed in a heap at our feet. It shook the dust from its bedraggled wings, managed to straighten up into an almost human posture, and stood looking at us for a moment.
Simply, unexpectedly, the monstrous creature told us its name: Don Ecuménico. The astrologer didn’t bat an eye, and Samuel Tesler’s gaze remained steady. I alone showed signs first of consternation and then of amazement, not so much because of the creature’s unusual name, scarcely blameworthy for its wholly innocent archaism, but rather for the astounding fact that a humble beast, little more than a worm with wings, was actually talking to us. That’s why, ignoring its name, I began to examine the physical details of that insect whose pretensions to humanity were, in my view, quite ludicrous. Its head was something like that of a common butterfly, with a pair of protruding, multi-faceted eyes, two fuzzy palpi, and a spiral-proboscis that rhythmically extended and retracted. However, I soon noticed a disturbingly human expression peering out from those bestial features, and an intelligent light flashing in those faceted eyes. Next came the thorax; from it sprouted feeble little legs and vast wings covered in yellow, red, and blue powder, clouds of which were shaken loose at the slightest tremor of the wings. Finally, there was the abdomen: its thick-ringed form still bore the imprint of the worm it had once been before it acquired its flying apparatus. A granular pollen of unhealthy hue fouled its head and thorax, as though the ungainly creature had entered a hundred prohibited flowers, brushing past poisonous stamens to get at accursèd nectars. But most disconcerting of all, the freakish thing had a story to tell, and it recounted its tale not just shamelessly but with gusto, which in my view was not at all appropriate in a talking bug, even if its name was Don Ecuménico.
– To understand my situation, the creature began, one ought to recall the ancient metamorphoses described in memorable pages by Ovid, Apuleius, and Lucian. Contrary to what lacklustre scholarly tradition has maintained, the theme of metamorphosis belongs not only to the classical mind, but to all men gifted with metaphysical antennae who intuit the possibility or risk of a transformation in the permanence of their being and in the ephemeral quality of their human structure. Now then, a metamorphosis may be a mere exchange of forms undertaken as naturally and innocently as the serpent changes its skin every year. Or it can be a mutation extraordinarily imposed as a punishment. My metamorphosis, gentlemen, is of the latter type.
After this exordium, the wingèd bug who gave his name as Don Ecuménico paused. I won’t say his initial tone was pedantic, irritating, or smugly pompous, since such nuances of expression are not easy to detect in a voice issuing from a ridiculous spiral-proboscis. What I will affirm, without risking injustice, is that when Don Ecuménico spoke of “punishment” his tone was shamelessly cold and academic, with none of the contrition that would have been good to hear from a creature thrown by the gods into the eighth circle of an inferno, even if such a creature was a laughably gawky butterfly with a name rusted out from sheer age.
– I was born in the barrio of San José de Flores,171 the insect continued. My father was a dour watchmaker from Turin, and my mother a tender young Spanish woman. I was the youngest of three brothers – the weakest, the odd-one-out in that abode of precisely ticking clockwork. We lived in a big old house; the workshop gave onto the street, and the other rooms were immense. Behind the wisteria-canopied patio was a wild backyard that my mother insisted on calling the “garden,” which was really a dense thicket of trees, creepers, and weeds crammed together in the tightest of brotherhoods. Not without anguish do I recall how I lived out my childhood in my father’s worksho
p (a room full of tick-tocks, monotone chimes, pendulums swinging obsessively, circular clocks chattering the hour, shouting out the hour, in dehumanized unanimity); or the rooms in the old house, always abuzz with conversations and games I didn’t share in; or the tangle of the garden, where my solitude found shelter and roundly ripened like a delicious fruit. I was barely nine years old, and – unlike most children, who embrace the strong, sweet, well-painted illusion of worldly things – I was already fretting with doubts and fears, guessing at secret realities behind what seemed to me the deceitful veil of actuality. So in my eyes the world was a concurrence of forms and deeds uncertain in nature, inexplicable, gratuitous, and thus always frightening. I recall that my metaphysical distrust grew to the point that I came to doubt the regularity of natural phenomena, and more than once woke up with my heart pounding in the grip of fear, suspecting that when I opened my eyes I’d be in another world, surrounded by different objects and abominable entities. Of course my childish intuitions never found any expressive outlet; rather, they made me sad and heartsick; my emotional excess tended to find release in tearful outbursts impossible to hold back, especially at the family dinner table when suddenly, inexplicably, the meal would strike me as the saddest and most absurd of human rites. Then, when asked to explain my tears, I wouldn’t know what to say and would doggedly cling to silence, which only made my father grunt his displeasure, my brothers poke fun at me, and my mother smile and favour me with a look full of kindly divinations. Later on, wanting to avoid the humiliation of that mockery and scolding, I invented for my tears a series of such far-fetched causes that, rather than convincing anyone, they only increased the already considerable notoriety of my “sob-fests.” Less abstract episodes contributed as well to the strange reputation that had grown around my sensitivity. I recall that my father, who as a good watchmaker was enthusiastic about new mechanical inventions, had bought one of the first phonographs to come to Buenos Aires. It was a shrill monster, with its nickel-plated horn and its metal mandrel into which one inserted a hollow cylinder etched with the song of one’s choice. Among the recordings my father had amassed, there was one that made the primitive phonograph my torture machine – a Spanish carcelera with a jailbird’s dark tale. The first lines went like this:
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