Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

No sooner had he heard the astrologer’s third response than the judge descended the third and final step, and beckoned us to follow him. We instantly obeyed, and while the judge was leading us around the dais, I asked Schultz in a tiny voice:

— Tell me, what poor devils was that shyster referring to?

— He was referring to those who sharpened their claws on the mordant stone of avarice.

— And what meaning is there in that mishmash of little fables you’ve just fed me?

— Tomorrow’s researchers, the astrologer pronounced modestly, will bust their butts trying to dig out the admirable meaning hidden in those little fables. 59

I made no further response, because our guide was now pointing us toward an open hatchway alongside the hind edge of the dais. We entered the hatchway, Schultz in the vanguard and I in the rear, and went down a few squeaky stairs. The trapdoor closed above our heads. Suddenly a deafening clamour assaulted my eardrums. Meanwhile, my eyes were adjusting to a yellowish light, glacial and dense, that seemed to fill the entire area as far as the horizon.

— The Plutobarrio , Schultz practically shouted into my ear.

I could hardly hear what he said, for the din exploded with greater violence, in a strange chord of triumphal shouts and sobs, blasphemies and idiotic laughter, curses and songs of joy, all of which caused the structure of that Inferno to shudder and shake, down to its smallest nuts and bolts. But, on the other hand, I could now make out the irascible multitude shouting and pushing and shoving each other before us in a kind of vast arena or battlefield, which was ringed by a belt of ruined factories, broken smokestacks, truncated skyscrapers, and crumbling mansions. Everything my eyes took in, plafond and ground, city and men, faces and clothes, was tinted the same hypocritical, shitty yellow I just mentioned — a colour that could not hide its falsity, a trinket-like colour of gilded brass. Only later did I find out that Schultz, when he used it in his Plutobarrio , was trying to suggest the notion of corrupt gold, gold that betrays its destiny, gold in a state of mortal sin. Nevertheless, I still couldn’t make out what kind of activity occupied the Plutobarrians in that circus; they scurried hither and thither raising a cloud of dust that blurred their movements. The dust cloud, too, had a yellowish tint that again suggested the presence of the ignoble metal, but in the subtle state of filings.

— What are those people doing there? I asked Schultz. From here it looks like a rodeo of unruly young bulls, or a battle of wild dogs, or I don’t know what.

The astrologer said not a word, but led me by the arm to the very edge of the ring. From there, through the dust cloud that by now was irritating our nostrils, I could see men struggling in a melee so fierce and brutal, it immediately put me in mind of the time we Racing fans took it to the fans of San Lorenzo, on our home turf, the day a certain bloody-minded referee tried to disallow a goal scored by our victorious jersey. The crowd before us now was a mixture of businessmen (capacious Perramus coats 60and fat cigars), heroes of the Stock Exchange (sporty suits and congested faces), merchants in stiff tuxedos or impeccable workcoats, directors of companies, and alchemists of speculation. Now I saw clearly that they were all running, colliding with one another, falling down in the yellow dust, getting back up like automatons to return to the struggle, in the midst of a hurly-burly of bonds, banknotes, securities, and shares that a great, erratic wind swept and swirled over the ground according to no other law than its own caprice. Some men snatched at them in the air; others picked them up from the ground; they fought over them, pushing and shoving, shouting and punching; they filled their wallets, pockets, and hats with grimy bits of paper that came flowing in from the four points of the compass. I suddenly noticed that the most frenetic among them were devouring their harvest of paper on the spot. When they got to the point of choking, they activated some spring-loaded lever hidden in their abdominal region: the metallic click of a cash register was then heard, and luminous numerals flashed across their foreheads, indicating the sum-total swallowed. The less greedy among them carted their booty off, defending it tooth and nail, until they got to the centre of the circus. There, demonic, pen-pushing cashiers, all a-buzz behind the bars of tellers’ booths, were accepting bank deposits, counting papers, and making out receipts with agile fingers and glacial expressions. Receipt in hand, the depositors checked the total, and then fell into a trance-like state, only to emerge moments later to return to the fray, exclaiming: “Six figures! Seven figures! Eight figures!”

As I watched those wretches at their arithmetical games, I tried to recognize some familiar face. But their physiognomies were all amazingly alike, wearing the same grimace in identical madness. And though I was able to pick out Polyphemous, the crafty beggar of San Bernardo, from among the harvesters, it was only because he was still clutching his unstrung guitar in his descent into hell, even as the multitude knocked him and spun him about like a top. Amid all the caterwauling, I thought I could hear him proferring his usual blessings as he lined the bottomless soundbox of his vihuela with paper bills.

— Curious! I said to Schultz, pointing to the buffeted figure cut by Polyphemous. Seeing that beggar here among the filthy rich…

The astrologer didn’t answer, for at that moment he was accosted by a voice declaiming from somewhere nearby:

— Citizens! Hey, citizens!

I turned in the direction of the voice, and only then noticed that beside us, half-hidden by the dust cloud, there rose a very high chair, similar to the ones used by the judges of tennis matches. A personage swollen with solemnity was sprawled in the chair. Looking at his face, I recognized the collector Zanetti, but in his Sunday best, wearing a red tie and a wide-brimmed hat à la Alfredo Palacios. Through a set of opera glasses held in his right hand, he gazed insistently upon the circus plutocrats. His left hand brandished a tightly folded copy of La Brecha , red with libertarian ink. Trousers rolled up to his knees, the collector Zanetti was soaking his martyred feet in a porcelain basin, the vulgarity of this operation in no way diminishing, however, his solemnly haughty demeanour.

— I know this man, I told Schultz. And, unless I’m mistaken, we’re in for an earful of literature.

Seated upon his high perch, the collector Zanetti was getting impatient:

— Citizens and workers! he again bellowed. If you use your intelligence and study the precise meaning of the operation these bourgeois are applying themselves to, you will quickly realize how abysmally stupid they are. Let me explain why. These bourgeois pigs, with all their money, can no longer add a single exquisite dish to their feasts, nor another link to the very long chain of their fornications, nor one more luxury to their motley mansions, nor another tint to the already baroque fabric of their concupiscence. And yet, they keep piling up gold that can’t buy them anything more. Their gold is reduced to abstract figures. It can only take the fleshless form of an ascending arithmetic progression, recorded in monumentally forlorn bankbooks. Comrades, are we not in the presence of a ridiculous madness? Doesn’t it make you want to laugh hysterically?

We did not respond at all, and the collector then threatened us with his copy of La Brecha :

— Answer me, or I’m coming down there! he called to us, his heels wiggling in the basin.

Schultz frowned with incipient indignation. But he hadn’t forgotten the ugly behaviour of the Cyclopes, and he answered prudently: