Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— Don’t disturb the water!

As if walking on eggs, the astrologer and I hurried along the bank of the pond, suffocating, sweating buckets, and determined to get ourselves out of that oven. But, leaving behind the Pond of the Lustful, we came upon a third setting no less unpleasant, which in my notes I’ve termed the Ravine of the Adulterers. It looked like an ancient riverbed, but no water had ever flowed over its gravel. Instead, something like a metallurgical heat, an invisible fire scorched the riverbed’s sands, multicoloured rocks, and prickly cacti. Human creatures of both sexes, naked and sad, were hard at work in the ravine, carrying, or rather dragging along their onerous burdens. A cacophonous brass band accompanied them, playing the “Song of the Volga Boatmen,” but with such comical dissonance as to delight a Stravinsky.

— Notice the overwhelming majority are men, Schultz told me.

— How honourable for our city, I answered. But what the heck are those people dragging?

— Come closer and see for yourself.

Approaching the bank of the riverbed, I saw what workers had in tow: their own sexual organs, but grown to incredibly monstrous proportions; they were tugging and jerking them over the sharp stones of the ravine.

— Brutal! I exclaimed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

The band stopped playing at that point. Work stopped, too, and the workers waited.

— Was one woman not enough for you? asked a voice as though from a loudspeaker.

— Ah! answered the workers in chorus. One wasn’t enough!

— Did you need two?

— Ah, we needed two!

— And why not three?

— Ah! Why not three?

— From another’s garden.

— Ah, from another’s garden. 36

— Well, then, sweat it out now in the ravine!

— Well, then, let’s sweat it out now in the ravine!

The brass band started up again, and the workers started pulling with all their might. I looked and looked again among their company, certain I’d find many people I knew, but without success. A few vaguely familiar faces, when they noticed me, immediately turned away with a definitely suspicious celerity. Suddenly, a man broke apart from the group and approached me, walking with as martial a gait as his great burden allowed.

— Conscript, atten-SHUN! he ordered in a stentorian voice.

— Yes, colonel! I said, recognizing him and saluting.

— Shhh! he silenced me. Absolute discretion! If you have to make a report, say that you saw Colonel X.

— At your orders, sir, I acquiesced. But I’d like to take a snapshot of you and hear a word or two about your current state.

— Not a word! he refused. Absolute discretion! Let me remind you, however, that mythology records an extramarital relationship between Venus and Mars. In fact, right now, just around the corner — and I tell you this in soldierly fraternity — I’m having a whale of a time with a certain nymph from Palermo. Sex appeal , the gringos call it. An old fox, I say.

— But, colonel…

— Silence, conscript! About-face! Forward, march!

I mechanically obeyed and went to join Schultz, who was waiting for me unfazed.

— Fine, the astrologer said. Now let’s go over and look at that slime-covered Wall.

Schultz unceremoniously led me into a fourth infernal sector called the Wall of Dirty Old Men. Among Schultz’s inventions, this one struck me as the most noteworthy (of course, I hadn’t yet seen the Meadow of the Ultras or the Canefield of the Sodomites). As its name suggested, this scenario featured a high, smooth wall. Countless old men in the form of slugs were trying, with extreme difficulty, to crawl their way to the top of the wall, leaving behind a shiny, gelatinous trail. But once they reached a certain height, the old men hesitated a moment, then fell straight back down to the bottom. Over and over again, they climbed up and fell back down, as obstinate as the creatures they resembled.

When we got close to the wall, Schultz spoke:

— Among the scourges afflicting Buenos Aires, one finds these shitty fossils. Having failed to become “mature young men,” they are condemned in perpetuity to be “dirty old men.” I’m quite aware that porteños have a tendency to Venusmania, either because of the climate or the aphrodisiac virtues of our River, or for some other unknown reason. The Italian monk Sergi, who visited Buenos Aires in 1640, 37as well as the English tourist Vidal in 1815, 38both point out in their memoirs the unbridled obsession among our men for the demotic or popular Venus (and I’m surprised that our friend Bernini, sociologist of indisputable merit, has not used this argument in support of his sadly famous doctrines). But, in other times, aided by a religion that admonished him from the cradle, the porteño male prudently submitted his ardour to the holy yoke of matrimony; or, after sacrificing the calf of his youth on the goddess’s altar, put on the slippers of wisdom and honourably redefined himself in his old age. Those were the elderly gentlemen of yesteryear, handsome and strong as carob trees, whose company one could not keep without gathering the well-seasoned fruit of experience! How different from the picture offered by the fossils of our time! With one foot in La Recoleta Cemetery 39and the other in a private booth at the Tabarís, the old crocks nowadays stubbornly cling to a false virility based on orthopedics and cosmetics. There you have them, slobbering all over my wall and leaving it a filthy mess! Fathers of our homeland who for half a century sat broody in a ministerial armchair hatching nothingness, and who now celebrate their jubilee years in bachelor pads reeking of perfume; directors of companies and managers of magazines who play the satyr with office girls and shopgirls; retirees and investors, chasers of typists; professors and academics…

— Splat!

That “splat” interrupted Schultz’s metaphorical speech, and the astrologer looked with displeasure at the slug who’d just tumbled down at our feet.

— Ah! said Schultz. It’s the senator.

— Hee, hee! laughed the slug. A slip isn’t the same as a fall. We good old boys are like that!

— Bah! said the astrologer. I can still see you standing at the door of the Jockey Club: 40you’d just had your facial massage, and you were dressed in natty white stockings bordered in black, a tie fit for an adolescent, and a corset cinching you like a pot-bellied donkey.

— It wasn’t that tight, rejoined the slug, trying to adhere once again to the wall.

— And perfumed like a rake! insisted Schultz. You’d watch the girls walking by and drool like a turkey, your watery little eyes examining their every detail, as if they were racing fillies.

— Can’t a fellow forget his grey hairs once in a while?

— That’s how you went bald, no matter how hard your toupee tries to cover it up. You were as luxuriously tricked out as a mummified fop. But what really made my blood boil was your urgent expression and that mysterious look you affected, as if you were trying tell the world you had what it takes to pull off an amorous exploit.

— And why not? said the slug trying to feign modesty.

— Don’t make me laugh! exclaimed Schultz. I know how you used to trot after dressmakers and accost the young women taking tea at Harrods, offering them everything from a Renault sports car to a professorship in literature.

— My lips are sealed! the slug insinuated.

— Of course! added Schultz. Then you used to try to dribble the ball past the goddess of Death by stuffing yourself with pills and enemas. I can just see you swaddled in your garish dressing-gown, feeble and farting around in your bachelor pad, your fur-piece resting on the wig stand, your glass eye in one cup and your false teeth in another. But whenever the voice summoning you to the mausoleum let up a bit, you’d gather your rickety skeleton together and turn your bones over to those restorative hands that keep on prolonging your enormous ridicule.