The Mad Toy

by Roberto Arlt

  On top of a dirty table, stacked next to leftover vegetables, were little pieces of meat and potatoes, which Don Miguel used to make the meagre pittance that was the midday meal. What was spared our voraciousness was served again at night-time as an outlandish stew. And Stinking God was the genius and the wizard of this repugnant alcove. We would go there to curse our luck; sometimes Don Gaetano would hide there to meditate on the discomforts of matrimony.

  The hatred that brewed in the woman’s breast always ended up by exploding.

  Some insignificant motive was enough, any little nothing.

  Suddenly, swollen by a dull fury, the woman would leave the counter and, with her slippers dragging on the tiles, wringing her hands underneath the scarf, with her lips set and her eyes wide open, would look for her husband.

  I remember the particular scene of that day:

  As was his custom, that morning Don Gaetano had pretended not to see her, even though he was only a step away from her. I saw the man bend his head towards a book and pretend to read the title.

  When she stopped, the pale woman stayed stock-still. Only her lips trembled, like leaves.

  Then she said in a voice that was a terrible monotone:

  ‘I was beautiful. What have you done to my life?’

  The hair that hung over her forehead trembled as if in a breeze.

  Don Gaetano shuddered.

  With a despair that caused her throat to close up, she threw the following words at her husband, heavy words, words like gunpowder:

  ‘I raised you up… Who was your mother…? Just a bagazza who went around with all the men? What have you done with my life…?’

  ‘María, shut up!’ Don Gaetano replied in a cavernous voice.

  ‘Yes, who was it who fed you and clothed you…? Me, strunzo… I fed you.’ The woman’s hand lifted as if she wished to strike her husband’s cheek.

  Don Gaetano retreated, trembling.

  She said, with a bitterness that trembled on the edge of sobbing, heavy gunpowder-like sobbing:

  ‘What have you done to my life… pig? I was happy in my house like a poppy in a pot, and I didn’t need to marry you, strunzo…’

  The woman’s lips moved convulsively, as if she were chewing on some sticky, terrible hatred.

  I went out to chase the curious bystanders away from the front of the shop.

  ‘Leave them, Silvio,’ she ordered me in a shout. ‘Let them hear who this scoundrel really is.’ Her green eyes were wide, making it seem as if her face were drawing ever nearer, like an image painted on the background of a screen, and she continued speaking, ever more pale:

  ‘If I were a different person, if I got around more, then I’d have a better life… I’d be a long way away from a hog like you.’

  She stopped talking and rested.

  Now Don Gaetano was looking after a gentleman in an overcoat, with big gold spectacles riding on a narrow cold-reddened nose.

  Aroused by his indifference, because the husband must have been used to these scenes and must have preferred to be insulted to losing his benefits, the woman called out:

  ‘Don’t listen to him, señor, don’t you see that he’s just a thief from Napoli?’

  The old gentleman turned round in astonishment to look at this fury, and she continued:

  ‘He’ll ask you twenty pesos for a book that cost four.’ As Don Gaetano did not turn round, she screamed until her face filled with blood: ‘Yes, you’re a thief, a thief!’ And she spat out her spite, her disgust.

  The old gentleman said, fixing his glasses more firmly on his nose:

  ‘I’ll come back some other day.’ And he left indignantly.

  Then Doña María took a book and threw it suddenly at Don Gaetano’s head, and then another one, and another one.

  Don Gaetano seemed to be drowning in rage. Suddenly he grasped at his neck, took the black tie and threw it at his wife’s face; then he stopped still for a moment as if he had been given a blow to the temple, and then he started running, he ran out into the street, his eyes sticking out of their sockets, and, stopping in the middle of the pavement, shaking his bare shaved head, waving like a madman to the passers-by, his arms held out, he shouted in a voice that rage had made unnatural:

  ‘Beast… beast… animal!’

  With satisfaction, she turned to me:

  ‘You see what he’s like? Worthless… scum! I’m telling you, sometimes I feel like leaving him.’ Turning to the counter she crossed her arms, still sunk in abstractions, her cruel gaze fixed on the street.

  Suddenly:

  ‘Silvio.’

  ‘Señora.’

  ‘How many days does he owe you for?’

  ‘Three including today, señora.’

  ‘Here you go.’ Passing me the money, she added: ‘Don’t trust him, he’s a con-artist… He cheated an Insurance Company; if I wanted, I could get him sent to jail.’

  I went to the kitchen.

  ‘What do you think, Miguel?’

  ‘Hell, Don Silvio. What a life! Stinking God!’

  And the old man, threatening heaven with his fist, sighed and then bent his head over the basin and carried on peeling potatoes.

  ‘But where do these explosions come from?’

  ‘I don’t know… they don’t have kids… he can’t perform…’

  ‘Miguel.’

  ‘Yes, señora.’

  The strident voice ordered:

  ‘Don’t make any food; we’re not going to eat today. Anyone who doesn’t like it can move out.’

  This was the coup de grâce. A few tears flowed down the ruined face of the starving old man.

  A few moments went by.

  ‘Silvio.’

  ‘Señora.’

  ‘Here you go, here’s fifty centavos. You go and find something to eat round here.’ Wrapping her arms in the folds of the green scarf, she took up her normal wild pose. On her livid cheeks two tears flowed slowly down to the corners of her mouth.

  Feeling moved, I murmured:

  ‘Señora…’

  She looked at me, and without moving her mouth, smiling with a strangely convulsive smile, she said:

  ‘Run along, and be back at five.’

  Taking advantage of my free afternoon I decided to go to see Señor Vicente Timoteo Souza, a man who dedicated himself to occult sciences and other theosophic studies, and to whom I had been recommended by a third party.

  I rang the bell and stayed looking at the marble staircase, on which the red carpet held in place by bronze stair-rods soaked up the sun that came through the glass of the heavy iron door.

  The porter, dressed in black, came down with perfect calm.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is Señor Souza in?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Astier.’

  ‘As…’

  ‘Yes, Astier. Silvio Astier.’

  ‘Wait here, I’ll go and see.’ After looking me over from head to toe he disappeared through the door to the receiving room, covered with long pale yellow curtains.

  I waited impatiently, anxiously, knowing that the decision that this grand gentleman Vicente Timoteo Souza took could change the whole destiny of my unfortunate adolescence.

  The heavy door opened again halfway, and the porter said to me solemnly:

  ‘Señor Souza says that you should return in half an hour.’

  ‘Thank you… thank you… goodbye.’ I went away, pale.

  I went into a nearby milkbar, and sat down by the table and ordered a coffee from the waiter.

  ‘Indubitably,’ I thought, ‘if Señor Souza agrees to see me then he’ll give me the job he promised.

  ‘No,’ I continued, ‘there’s no reason to think badly of Souza… Think of all the reasons he could have given not to receive me, how busy he is…’

  Oh, Señor Timoteo Souza!

  I had been presented to him one winter morning by Demetrio the theosophist, who was trying to improve my situation.

&nbs
p; Sitting in the hall around a twistingly carved table, Señor Souza, his close-shaven cheeks and his bright pupils behind his round glasses shining brightly, had led the conversation. I remember he had been wearing a velvet déshabillé with mother-of-pearl buttons and beaver cuffs, all elements that added to his role as rastaquouère, a person who could give himself the freedom to talk to some poor devil simply to amuse himself.

  We were talking, and with reference to my possible psychological make-up, he said:

  ‘A double crown, an uncontrollable temper… head flat in the occiput, a rational temperament… a rapid pulse, romantic leanings…’

  Turning to the impassive theosophist, Señor Souza said:

  ‘I’m going to make this rat study medicine. What do you think, Demetrio?’

  The theosophist, without reacting:

  ‘Very well… although any human being can be useful to humanity as a whole, however insignificant his social position.’

  ‘Ha ha; you’re always a philosopher.’ Señor Souza, turning towards me, said:

  ‘Well… Astier, my friend, write down what occurs to you at this very moment.’

  I hesitated, then I wrote down with the expensive golden propelling pencil that the man had offered me, almost deferentially:

  Limestone boils when it is made wet.

  ‘An anarchist, eh? Look after your brain, my friend… look after it well, because you’ll have a surmenage at some point between the ages of twenty and twenty-two.’

  Because I did not know what he meant, I asked him:

  ‘What’s a surmenage?’

  He turned pale. I still get embarrassed when I remember it.

  ‘It’s just a phrase,’ he said. ‘It’s important for us to control all of our feelings.’ And then he carried on:

  ‘Our friend Demetrio tells me that you have invented all kinds of things.’

  A great amount of sunlight came in through the windows, and a sudden memory of my misery made me so sad that I took a while to answer, but eventually I did, in a bitter voice:

  ‘Yes, a few things… A signal flare, an automatic star counter…’

  ‘Theory… dreams…’ He interrupted me, rubbing his hands. ‘I know Ricaldoni,19 and for all his inventions he is still a simple physics teacher. The person who wants to get rich has to invent practical things, simple things.’

  I felt like I was covered with a layer of misery.

  He continued:

  ‘The guy who invented the diabolo, do you know who he was…? A Swiss student, bored in his room one winter. He earned a huge amount of money, just like that other guy, the North American, who invented the pencil with the rubber on the end.’

  He stopped talking, took out a gold cigarette case with a bouquet of rubies on the back, and offered us cigarettes made with blond tobacco.

  The theosophist refused with a small movement of the head, I accepted. Señor Souza continued:

  ‘Speaking of other things. From what our friend here has told me, you need a job.’

  ‘Yes, señor, a job where I can advance, because where I am at the moment…’

  ‘Yes… yes… I know, with the Neapolitan… I know… he’s a character. Very good, very good… I don’t think there should be a problem. Write me a letter that sets out all the peculiarities of your character, completely frankly, and I’m sure I’ll be able to help you. And when I make a promise, I keep it.’

  And now he was negligently getting up from his chair:

  ‘Demetrio, my friend… a real pleasure… Come and see me soon, I want to show you some paintings. Astier, my dear young man, I will await your letter.’ With a smile, he added:

  ‘Careful not to try to fool me.’

  Once we were in the street, I said to the theosophist with enthusiasm:

  ‘What a good man Señor Souza is… and all because of you… thank you so much.’

  ‘We’ll see… we’ll see…’

  I stopped daydreaming so that I could ask the waiter in the milkbar what the time was.

  ‘Ten to two.’

  What would Señor Souza have decided?

  Over the past two months I had written to him frequently, insisting on the precariousness of my situation, and after long silences, and brief notes which were typewritten and unsigned, the wealthy man deigned to receive me.

  ‘Yes, it must be to give me a job, either in the municipal administration or in the government. If that’s the case, what a surprise for mother!’ And when I remembered her, in that milkbar with its swarms of flies flying around the pyramids of alfajores and pan de leche,20 a sudden tenderness brought tears to my eyes.

  I stubbed out my cigarette and after paying I went off to Souza’s house.

  My veins were throbbing when I rang the bell.

  I immediately pulled my finger off the doorbell, thinking:

  ‘I hope he won’t think that I’m impatient for him to see me and that that upsets him.’

  How much timidity was in that single ring on the bell! It was as if I wanted to say, by ringing the bell:

  ‘I’m sorry for bothering you, Señor Souza… but I need a job…’

  The door opened.

  ‘I’m here… the master…’ I babbled.

  ‘Come in.’

  I climbed the stairs on tiptoe after the flunky. Although the streets were dry, I had rubbed my feet on the doormat as I came in so as not to make anything dirty.

  We stopped in the vestibule. It was dark.

  Standing by the table, the servant arranged some flowers in their crystal vase.

  A door opened, and Señor Souza appeared dressed for the street, his eyes sparkling behind the lenses of his little round glasses.

  ‘Who are you?’ he called to me harshly.

  Disconcerted, I replied:

  ‘But señor, I am Astier…’

  ‘I do not know you, sir; don’t bother me any more with your impertinent letters. Juan, show this gentleman to the door.’

  Then, turning to go, he shut the door firmly behind my back.

  And once again, even more sad, under the sun, I took the road back to the cave.

  One afternoon, after they had insulted each other until they were hoarse, Don Gaetano’s wife, realising that her husband wouldn’t leave the shop as he had done on previous occasions, made up her mind to leave herself.

  She went out to Esmeralda Street and came back carrying a white bundle. Then, in order to hurt her husband, who was insultingly singing a couplet at the door to the cave, she went to the kitchen and called Stinking God and me to her. Pale with fury, she gave me orders:

  ‘Take this table out, Silvio.’ Her eyes were greener than ever and there were two crimson patches on her cheeks. Without caring that the hem of her skirt would get dirty in the damp hovel, she bent over to gather the goods she would take with her.

  Trying not to get stained with grease, I took the table – a board with four rotten legs – out of the room. This was where the wretched Stinking God prepared his witches’ brews.

  The woman said:

  ‘Put it with the legs pointing upwards.’

  I understood what she was thinking. She wanted to turn it into a barrow.

  I was not wrong.

  Stinking God used the broom to sweep a lot of cobwebs from the bottom of the table. And after wiping it clean with a cloth, the woman put down on the table a white bundle, the casseroles filled with plates, knives and forks, she tied the Primus stove to one leg of the table with a wire and, reddened by her efforts, said, as she surveyed the job nearly done:

  ‘That dog can go and eat in a hash joint.’

  After he had finished arranging the packages, Stinking God, bent over the table, looked like a quadruped in a cap, and I, with my hands on my hips, was wondering where Don Gaetano was going to find our petty wages.

  ‘You, take the front.’

  Stinking God, resigned, took hold of the board and so did I.

  ‘Go slow,’ the woman cried out cruelly.

  We knocke
d over a pile of books as we walked past Don Gaetano.

  ‘Go on, you pig… go on,’ he said.

  She gritted her teeth in fury.

  ‘Thief!… The judge will come tomorrow.’ We went away in the pause between two threatening gestures.

  It was seven o’clock in the evening and Lavalle Street was showing off its most Babylonian splendour. Through the plate-glass windows you could see that the cafés were crammed with customers; carefree dandies gathered in the entrances of the theatres and cinemas; and the windows of clothes shops – which displayed legs in sheer stockings hanging from nickel-plated bars – and those of jewellery stores and orthopaedic stores all showed by their opulence the cunning of the businessmen who used their spiffy goods to flatter the voluptuousness of the wealthy.

  The crowd parted as we came by, as they did not want us to stain them with the dirt we were carrying.

  Ashamed, I thought about the ridiculous figure I must be presenting; to crown my unfortunate situation, the plates and cutlery were making a scandalous noise, as if announcing my ignominy. People stopped to watch us go past, enjoying the spectacle. I didn’t look at anyone, I felt so humiliated, and, like the cruel fat woman who walked ahead of us and slowed us down, I endured the jokes that our appearance provoked.

  Various cabs escorted us, their drivers offering us their services, but Doña María, deaf to them all, walked in front of the table, whose legs caught the light that came from the shop windows. In the end, the drivers gave up their pursuit.

  Every now and then Stinking God would lift his bearded face towards me over his green scarf. Thick drops of sweat ran down his dirty cheeks, and in his sad eyes there shone a doglike despair.

  We rested in Lavalle Plaza. Doña María made us put the improvised barrow down on the ground and scrupulously examined its load, reorganised the bundle and settled the casseroles, whose lids she secured in place with the four corners of a dishcloth.

  Bootblacks and newspaper boys had surrounded us. The prudent presence of a policeman helped us avoid possible complications, and we went on our way again. Doña María was going to the house of one of her sisters who lived at Callao and Viamonte.

  Sometimes she would turn her pale face, look at me, with a slight smile twisting her colourless lips, and say: