Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

Caught between anger and embarrassment, I shook Schultz by the shoulder:

— Take it easy! I said. And speak naturally! Can’t you spare us that ghastly language of melodrama?

— Not to worry, he responded. Romance has died: now it has its tombstone and epitaph. Now comes the shameful part.

— Go ahead and say it, if you’re man enough! the homunculus challenged him.

— It isn’t easy, Schultz admitted. We had just sat down to table in profoundly sentimental circumstances, when they brought in the first course. Keep in mind my emotional state: Tristan and Isolde, Hungarian violins, and so on. Suddenly, I see how this gentleman drops his harmless demeanour and brutally attacks the serving platters, empties them, licks them clean. Around me I hear voices, throats being cleared; everyone was trying to distract me from that astonishing spectacle. In vain. Fascinated, my attention is rivetted on Don Celso, who chews and devours, sucks bones and slurps up sauces, displaying a gluttony I haven’t seen in even the worst beasts. And quaffing libations whose generosity and frequency were enough to make a Knight Templar blush.

— Gentle souls! whined the priestly figure at this point.

The dapper old fop, who had been disdainfully holding his peace, clapped utterly incredulous eyes on Don Celso.

— Him? he asked.

— You’ve got it, Schultz affirmed. And just think, if he climbed down off his pot, he wouldn’t stand two feet off the ground. Well, when there were no more delicacies to wolf down and no more platters to lick clean, I see how this gentleman closes his eyes, saws off a few snores punctuated by gaseous belches, and sinks at last into the lethargy of a boa constrictor.

Don Celso seemed to have been measuring and judging each and every one of Schultz’s words as if they had nothing to do with him. Now he gestured approvingly:

— Not bad, he opined. A certain Homeric influence in the style, which will no doubt become more acute when this narrator tries to depict me as a modern-day Polyphemous. But please go on, Schultz, young man. I’ll admit your gift for comedy is irresistible.

The astrologer continued:

— That first revelation of the monster was not long in making its effects felt. It was as if a deep chill had fallen over the dining room, freezing the laughter and wilting the voices. I looked at Nora and saw her shrivel up beside me like a dry leaf. The sisters sizzled no longer (three extinguished torches). Mother dear had closed her eyes and was slowly crumbling beneath mournfully opaque jewels and faded lace. But listen up, now! Just at that moment the second course was brought to table!

Schultz opened a well-calculated parenthesis of silence. I waited for the end of the story as one awaits punishment. The water-closeted personages held their breath, and Don Celso’s forehead was already inclined, as if anticipating an ovation.

— I won’t describe, Schultz went on, the variety and nature of the delicacies of the second service. I’ll just say that as soon as he caught a whiff of food, this gentleman, whom we left apparently sunk in the deepest Nirvana, instantly stopped snoring and swaying like a pendulum. His nostrils flared with delight, and he cautiously opened two incredulous eyes. Convinced at last that neither smell nor sight was deceiving him, he smiled at the serving dishes, at the commensals, at the room, at the world. Right away the monster attacked again, as voraciously as before, but this time shouting enthusiastically, inviting us with fervent harangues — the oaf! — to imitate him. Whether the second course lasted an instant or a century, I don’t know. All I remember is that finally the monster, wineglass in hand, struggled laboriously to his feet, as though about to make a toast. But alas! No speech issued from his greasy lips, but rather the first bars of an operatic romance. And all of sudden, without warning, the fool collapsed on the table, knocking over glasses and smashing plates. His stiffened fingers clutched at the tablecloth, and his mouth chucked up intermittent jets of grunt, vomit, and laughter.

— Merciful God! wept the priestly figure. Lord, your own image and likeness!

— Bravo! Bravo! applauded the homunculus.

— I got up from the table, concluded Schultz, ran out of the dining room and away from the house. I never went back!

Don Celso looked at him now with ineffable sadness.

— Yes, he said. And to sum up: three withered orchids in a vase. And a poor girl dead from a broken heart…

— Dead? cried Schultz. Dead?

— Dead from a broken heart for exactly eight days, Don Celso clarified. Until my friend Tosto, the pasta manufacturer, opened his heart and his chequebook.

The astrologer sighed with relief:

— Ah, that’s so much like her! he said. In her hands, life was like a music box.

— I’d say more like a strongbox, gurgled the homunculus as he dozed off.

The absurd conversation with the toilet-bowl types seemed to be over. The astrologer Schultz was just signalling that he wanted to get a move on, when the priestly figure addressed us elegiacally:

— My beloved brethren in Christ, should the pressing demands of your excursion allow you sufficient time to hear another story, close not your ears to the one I wish to relate to you now, motivated not by literary vanity, but rather by the desire that its lessons may instruct and edify you, and render you fruitful in the virtue I lacked there above. Peccavi tibi, Domine! Mea culpa!

— Let’s hear him out, Schultz said to me. There’s nothing like travel for getting an education.

— My dear brothers, continued the priest. By the grace of God, I was the parish priest of San Bernardo, in industrious and proletarian Villa Crespo.

— This gentleman is from Villa Crespo too, said Schultz, introducing me.

The priestly figure observed me briefly and then shook his head:

— No, he rejoined. He’s too young. I’m referring to the idyllic era in Villa Crespo, before it received the colour of Israel.

— Colour and odour, Schultz blandly interrupted him again. 50

The priest smiled through his tears, and continued thus:

— Gentle souls who listen to me, the Villa-Crespian flock of yesteryear was the one Our Lord entrusted to me, that I might watch over it, care for it, and lead it to the eternal meadows. To Him must I account for each and every one of my sheep when their hour arrives, as did He Himself to his Heavenly Father. “ Tui erant, et mihi eos dedisti, et sermonem tuum servaverunt .” In the vernacular: “Thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word.” 51And now ye shall see, my brethren, how I lost the Lord’s sheep! Among the seven capital sins laying siege to man and obliging him to do battle, the one that fell to my lot was gluttony, a gross vice which like no other lowers man to the obscure level of the beast. If it be true that every vice has its demon, the demon of gluttony had enthroned itself in my innards such that, the more I offered him, the more he demanded. The demon was always awake and orienting my energy, my memory, my understanding, and my will toward food, at all hours and places. In my parish there were innumerable sick people to attend, widows to console, orphans to succour, and needy persons to help. Nevertheless, far from approaching those abodes of tribulation according to the injunction of Canonical Law, I frequented the houses of magnates in Villa Crespo, above all on those festive occasions (weddings and baptisms) that traditionally end with a lavish spread. There I could be seen realizing such gastronomic feats as disconcerted not a few burghers, who gazed in astonishment, forks suspended in mid-air. To be sure, the fasts imposed by the Holy Church on her ministers are not excessive. Nonetheless, such was the ingenuity I devoted to sophisms, cunning arguments, and ways of cheating those fasts, that I could easily have written another Summa Theologica . 52I said mass only at dawn, racing through the Missal toward a toothsome breakfast. Oftentimes, in the late afternoon, the penitent souls awaiting my absolution behind the grill of the confessional received nothing more than the snores and burps of my laborious digestion. The rest of my day, which was a fair amount of time, I dedicated not to reading the Holy Scriptures, but to rummaging through rare and beguiling cookbooks for some unique recipe, some Byzantine delicacy I might concoct on my stove; the aromas wafting from my kitchen throughout the neighbourhood provoked mockery among the sated, blasphemy among the hungry. Thus began the scandal in the Villa (“ Vae mundo a scandalis ,” the Lord has said). 53My blindness notwithstanding, it did not take me long to notice how my flock was dispersing, how the faithful were being lost, how even those who just yesterday would seek me out now avoided crossing my path. The day came when, if they ran into me, the women rushed to touch wood, the children to touch iron, and the men, by way of a preventive spell, surreptitiously touched their testicles. Alas, my brothers! It was as though they saw in me the devil himself and not a priest ordained according to the order of Melchizedek. 54The worst of it was that the hosts of error, aided and abetted by my terrible negligence, began to set up their rostrums in my parish and to judge the Lord by the unworthiness of His servant. Ay! It was then I saw how the Lord was being crucified a second time in Villa Crespo! For the second time, before my eyes, He was insulted at the corner where the tannery stands, scourged and spat upon at Lombardi’s sawmill, crowned with thorns in front of the stable of Ureta the Basque, nailed to the cross on the banks of the Maldonado…