The famished sarabande whirled beneath the electric globes swinging in the pampero, among myriad soda siphons. The light of the upside-down worldfn8 drank its gout-ridden crowds, perfumers at the mercy of Progress, urethras levelled by soda water. ‘¡Mozo, tráigame otro sifón!’ A blithe imbecility cheered the faces of everyone; the women powdered themselves at every course, as though they were scratching an acne, or with the gestures of Barbary apes that had been handed cacahuètes,fn9 they ate minestrone and lipstick. And everyone hoped, hoped, joyfully. And were full of confidence. Or else, authoritative, kept silent. At table; chest out, back straight; wrapped in the starched get-up of a dinner jacket almost in sticking plaster and in the supreme turgor of certainty and of biological reality. From time to time they made the siphons piss: and the siphon manfully micturating gave the hand of the jobless a certain gravity. And they gargled, baritonal, clean-shaven, with the mouthwash of memories: boasting fictitious nights and profits from diamonds sold: (but which never existed): there was silence, on the fibbing face of the woman, as to how many birds were really netted.
The son, standing, by the table, looked unseeingly at the modest table-setting, the slight steam that it was exhaling: while his aged mother was still searching for some cutlery, a plate, a pretext, from the cupboard in the kitchen dresser. Once again she was anxious.
Boys: with legs like two sticks of asparagus. Stupider than if their heads were made of turnip, children who seemed unable to talk: after twelve generations of maize and misery from green feet, they too formed from the bastard Ark of the generations, attempting to mumble some of their mean braggadocio in the forum: the crooked forum of Pastrufazio!, down, down they came, from the stinking cheeses of Monte Viejo to be the most abject failures at the Uguirre,fn10 dumb and acephalous in Castillian, deaf in Latin, recalcitrant in Greek, inept in history, with brains below zero in geometry and arithmetic, not satisfactory in drawing; even in geography they were unsatisfactory! it took weeks, years, of effort to make them understand what a map of victorious Maradagàl is! and how maps are made: and still, still, they couldn’t manage it, poor darlings!
And yet they slid down like oil to their flag-decked launching, launched finally into the realm of stupidity with full honours and official sanction: their hulls greased by stupidity. The more stupid they were, the happier and smoother went the slide beneath their arses, down, down, from the green croconsuelo of Monte Viejo to the floating tumefaction of the avenida, a full set of wattles. Some wrinkled old woman could always be found, in the storehouse of old women, with a mouth of six and maybe seven teeth, to break the propitiatory bottle over the prow of the ignoramus: enough to provide those few rebounding shards that ritual requires, God willing, with that splash of froth. (The cheeks of the young calf, in any event, had to be licked with an appropriate amount of adoring saliva, snivelling and slavering, over each new failure, the esteeming, affectionate, watery mucus of a pear-shaped nose.)
And in the same way that the ship slides down arsey-versy, so do these, the majority, like a ship or a crayfish, and precisely because they are crayfish, arsey-versy, due to their non-qualifications, they went down, slid happily into the world. Painted with their own new splendour. And others, in whose florid cheeks, beneath the nardous shine of their hair, one perceived a flannelled adolescence, au rosbif. Gardens of rosbif! Everyone, everyone, entered the light: the light of life enveloped them, poured over their heads, anointed by the patient power generators of the Cordillera. Which water their plaster paradises. Everyone, everyone! Turks, pancake sellers, Circassians, guitar-playing beggars from Andalusia, Poles, Armenians, Mongols, Arab thaumaturges in bowler hats, thick-lipped Senegalese with goat’s feet, and even Langobardòi from Cormanno, immigrants from Cormanno (Curtis Manni), to beat, even in the new world, the record for obtuseness and lack of imagination. And the agent for the perfume house, a Greekling; and the other, Jewish, for the rug company. Who also dealt, on his own account, after work, in pictures, though second-hand, batches of paper-mill scraps, and sixteenth-century heretic furniture. Everyone, everyone.
They all had their own life, their own woman: and let themselves be launched: and were in a condition to be taken seriously. Each in his own way; and even the clay-pigeon launcher. Many in evening dress. Everyone actually believed they were something serious. Members of the Maradagalo-Parapagalese Grand Orient, many also sought the help of fripperies, toggles of cornelian or polished bone, assorted haberdashery. The freemasons of the Scottish rite, on the occasion of their annual meeting, there at the end of Saenz Peña, at number 3225, could be seen with a kind of tassel of merino sheepskin hanging from their jackets and dangling between their legs; or, through their check waistcoat, other tassels, though rather smaller, and ribbons, and green cords, and a two-tone or orange frill. Some then, for celebrations or patriotic anniversaries of old England, appeared dressed in buttons of unusual brightness, or in eighteenth-century costume, with a wig: two days later the Fray Mocho would publish the glory and magnesiac splendour of the horseshoe banquet, among a heap of cockades, ribbons, goblets, flowers, braid, masonic turbans – (though only he, Gonzalo, saw these, in his delirium) – with Amazonian parrot feathers: and their women with bird-of-paradise feathers. And fanning flabellums of ostrich feather, dyed pink, over buttery breasts: and feathers, small and large. And in the coldest season, which is from St Brigid’s Day to around St Balafron’s Day, fat silk merchants and engineers couldn’t wait to put on their heavy furs from beyond the polar circle, of the strangest bears, sables, seals from Pitt Land, kangaroos from Australasia, and opossums. They, the women, sometimes wore diamond tiaras over their hair: and their husbands had collars with a tin pendant, in zincotype, which was none other than the effigy of Mazzini, his neck wholly wrapped in his collar-cravat, white, all-in-one: his beard neatly bipartite and cut with scissors, two swollen bags, beneath the eyes: some preferred instead to adorn themselves with a face of Disraeli, with sideburns, or old Sarmiento. And from those dress-collars were hung small pendants in the shape of triangles, thirty-threes, or a small hammer, small trowels in silver, or even in gold. Others, with a Prince of Wales-flannel elegance, added gold chains, delicately, around their wrist, and a gold watch, around their wrist: and attached various gewgaws to the chains: small medallions with a holy image, in enamel, or a four-leaf clover in relief, of fine green enamel; or even both together, the Madonna and the lucky charm, given that we never know, at the time, what might be of greater help, to save us from the plague. Or, instead, a small horseshoe, but in gold: with white pearl dots for nails.
Wristwatches! Some of them had real chronometers, that is (they explained), stopwatches: with a third, fourth and fifth hand, each extremely thin: the last a mere thread, which sped off just on pressing, ping!, a secret button, with the tip of the thumb: it was for races, at the off, in other words, on departure, which every now and then they called ‘starting’, using the English word: or on arrival, by a head, half a head.
The watch face, black, with the months and the quarters of the moons in a scarlet-red line, or in evening-gold, with the seconds, the minutes, the years, the Hijra, in green and in lemon colour; and the revolutions of Uranus in sapphire blue. So that a chronometer like that on the wrist of the tobacco seller, for those who happen to see it, and it’s hard not to notice it, places its illustrious wearer among a supposed mathematical-geomantic or geophysical elite, as though one were describing an Egyptian or Chaldean priestly-astrological caste, a closed Orphic-Pythagorean community holding Copernican contraband two thousand years before Copernicus. Whereas on most occasions he was a perfectly normal and perfectly solvent Brusuglio, who had travelled from the other side of the ocean ‘with his intelligence and willpower’. Ergo, on his way up.
The mother, now, having gone out and back several times, stood there, almost trembling, her hands clasped before her, waiting for her son to settle down at the table. Doing what she could, in the darkness of the kitchen, her persistent endeavour had produced, f
rom the bottom of a forgotten jar, some pickles: and having arranged those three greenish, shrivelled chilli peppers on a chipped coffee saucer, returning to the room, she placed the saucer on the table, in the reverent gesture of Melchior who places an offering, the precious pot of myrrh, before the Infant. A painful agitation pounded once again at her scant minutes: her old and worn minutes! filled only with a heartbeat. Gonzalo continued staring like a sleepwalker at the food, the tablecloth, the circle of the oil lamp on the table, without seeing them. Barely any steam, now, from the dish, towards the dark heights.
Where was her humiliated knowledge going, with tattered shreds of memory in the wind, with no more cause or purpose? Where did the industrious minds strive for truth, with their righteous certainty, enlightened by God?
Black waiters, in restaurants, had tailcoats, though stained with grease: and starched fronts, with clip-on ties. With just a starched front, of course: in other words, without that most impressive of all pectoral dignities ever spreading itself out into a complete harmony, in the necessitating physiology of a shirt. Which was altogether absent.
The women, pervaded by a quavering thrill: as soon as they heard themselves honoured with the title of señora by such deferential tailcoats. ‘Chocolate and cream for the Señora, certainly, Señora!’ From the neck to the heels, like a shot of sweetness, the ‘pure hidden joy’ of the hymn.fn11 And also in the men, for that matter, the secret itch to be patronized: up, up, from the groin to the meninges and the eyeballs, almost, for a moment of marquisial power. Having suddenly forgotten all the industrial strikes; the cries of death, the barricades, the communes, the threat of being hanged from the lamp posts, the purple of Père Lachaise; and the black and clotted congealment over the goyesque abandonment of those stretched out, exhausted; and the uproar and the blockades and the wars and the massacres, of every kind and of every land; for a moment! for that moment of delight. Oh! what pang of sweetness! Brought to us by the reverent tailcoat: ‘A lemon ice soda for the Señor, certainly, Señor! A lemon ice soda for the Señor!’ The splendid, ostentatious call, filled with deference and a touching solicitude, more intoxicating than an Elysian melody by Bellini, echoed from waiter to waiter, from starched front to starched front, enhancing the new dextrorotatory enchantments of the customer’s marquisionic hormones;fn12 until, having reached the counter, it was: ‘a lemon ice soda for that asshole on 128!’
Yes, yes: they were most considerate, the tailcoats. Serious people in railway station restaurants, people to be taken seriously, ordered ‘an ossobuco with risotto’ from them in perfect seriousness. And they nodded, with solicitous approval. And did so in full possession of their respective mental faculties. All were taken seriously: and each behaved with great respect for the others. Those sitting at table felt themselves drawn together in the choice situation of their breasts, in the acquisition of suspension adequate to the importance of their buttocks, in the dignity of their command. Each of them was gratified by the presence of the others, the audience they desired. And no one was prompted to think, ‘What a cretin!’, as they glanced at their neighbour. Behind the Himalaya of cheeses, of fennels, the attendant announced the departures: ‘¡Para Corrientes y Reconquista! ¡Sale a las diez el rápido de Paraná! ¡Tercero andén!’
Generally, the fruit knife was blunt. They couldn’t peel the apple. Or the apple skidded off the plate like a catapult stone, to roll off between shoes far away. That was when, with an angry voice and offended dignity, they would say: ‘Waiter! This knife is blunt!’ An imperatorial cloud, all of a sudden, between eyebrows. And the waiter would hurry breathless, with more ossobuco: and manifesting his complete consternation, his full sympathy, he offered his humble apologies for the annoyance to Their Worships: (in a tone more than calming): ‘try this one, Señor Caballero!’: and he was already gone. Though ‘this’ was even more blunt than the last. Oh! how vexing!, while everyone else, meanwhile, continued chewing, munching the flesh from the bones, with gravy lubricating their tongues, their moustaches. With a slight smile, oh! a shadow, a touch of irony, the extreme and extremely elegant couple, he, she, far, far away, appeared still conscious of that apple, motionless at last in the middle of the floor: shiny, and green, as De Chirico would have painted it. Into which, cursing under their breath, as they do in Bologna, the successive waves of ossobuco-tailcoats stumbled each time, though with nimble forward kicks, and almost in return, one to the other: like Meazza, like Boffi. Some mangled imprecations were uttered like viper’s spit, though not so quietly to prevent it being understood what they were: from behind piles of plates in transit, or dishes of mayonnaise, or heaps of asparagus from which melted butter dribbled on to the polish; everything then followed, suddenly, by abrupt marine waterspouts of risotto, towards the rescuing shore.
Everyone, everyone: and all the more those men and women at table. All of them most highly esteemed! Never, ever, had it occurred to anyone to suspect they might even be numbskulls, perchance, three-year-old children.
Nor even they themselves, who had a thorough knowledge of all that pertained to them, their in-growing toenails, and their verrucas, their moles, their corns, one by one, their varicose veins, pimples, the usual blemishes: not even they, no, no, would have formed such a judgement about themselves.
And that was life.
They smoked. Straight after the apple. Preparing to unleash the charm, which, for a long time now, namely from the period of the ossobuco, had gradually been accumulating in their person – (like the static in friction machines) – here, here, everyone was certain that one of their unanticipated pronouncements would have triggered the all-important spark, flash and shot of Dominion over the appropriate environmental ignition system, of spilled forks. Cascades of clattering cutlery! Of teaspoons!
And they were on the very point of reaching that unanticipated, and yet most curious, moment, that was so instantly evoked by the tension of the occasion.
From their pocket, with careless nonchalance, they extracted their silver cigarette case, a fairly solid and substantial cigarette, with a gold paper tip; tapped it lightly on the cigarette case, which meanwhile was shut by the other hand, with a click; they placed it between their lips; and then, as though irritated, as a slight horizontal furrow appeared on their brow, darkened by lofty cares, they replaced the irrelevant cigarette case. Having moved on to the ceremony of the matches, they finally produced, after searching two or three pockets, a book of matches: but, having opened it, they found that all of them had already been pulled out, so that the matchbook was banished post haste, with much disdain, from the confines of the self. And there it lay, abandoned, on the plate, with the peelings. Another, at last, came to the rescue, brought out finally from the 1st 2nd 3rd pocket. They broke open the stamp-seal, a ubiquitous image of the Triune Revenue Authority, until they had lain bare that miraculous little comb, the Urmutter of all pin-headed sprites. They pulled one from it, struck it, lit up; unfurrowing with renewed serenity their brow, already so overburdened with thought: (but thought of the most cretinous kind, concerning, for the most part, articles of celluloid jewellery). They returned the now unnecessary piece of card into some other pocket: which? oh! they forget as soon as they do it; to have an excuse (on the occasion of a contiguous cigarette) to recommence the most important and fruitful search.
After which, the subject of stunned admiration from the ‘other tables’, they would draw the first mouthful of that exceptional smoke, of Xanthia, or of Turmac; with an intense pleasure like the sybarites in the thirty-second, which would have stirred the pity of a constipated Turk.
And so they remained: elbow resting on the table, cigarette between middle and index finger: emitting voluptuous smoke-swirls; mingled with miasmas, this we know, from the happy bronchial tubes and lungs, while the stomach was all a syrup, and went behind like a desperate amoeboid processing and peptonizing the ossobuco. Peristalsis passed off in triumphal fashion, so as to seem song and triumph, and omen of a distant drum, the triumphal m
arch of Aida or of Carmen’s toreador.
So they remained. Looking. At whom? What? The women? But not even at them. Perhaps contemplating themselves in the mirror of others’ eyes. In full appreciation of their cuffs, and of their cufflinks. And their faces of ossobuco-eating manikins.
Many adverts for tobaccos, or liqueurs, of the oiliest and greeny-yellow variety, had been inspired, throughout South America, by the elegance of their shirt cuffs. On the back cover of Fray Mocho, for example, you would often see the smoke of a cigarette emerging from someone’s mouth and up towards the ceiling, or rather towards the physical limit of the page: in thin, elegant spirals: and his elbow on the table, and the small glass of oily liqueur. And his cuff, and his ‘aristocratic’ fingers, and the cigarette, were high and enviable before the manly image of digestion (of buco and osso), with moustaches, appropriately trimmed. Ardent, dreaming souls, of young men, most of them office messengers of the young and working-hairdresser classes, imagined themselves becoming like that: one day! From the Apennines to the Andes. With that cigarette between their middle and index finger, that glass of yellow liqueur on the table, that cuff, those cufflinks. Oh! yes, yes! You could see that, truly, this was someone who could now say to himself: ‘yo soy un hombre.’ It wasn’t the face of a numbskull: no, no.
The Experience of Pain Page 15