Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

He fixed us with an inquistive gaze and shook his head, visibly skeptical:

— You don’t get it at all! he groused. When I say I robbed them of their human time, I mean their time for singing, laughing, contemplating, and knowing. And that’s where the great theological mischief comes into play! Because by robbing them of all that, I’ve robbed them perhaps of that special moment, the unique opportunity even the lowliest man has a right to: the chance to look in peace and quiet at a flower or a skyscape, hear without anxiety his children laugh and his wife sing, and so discover that life is hard but beautiful, God-given by a good God…

At these last words, the solitary of the sawmill let his brow fall to the table. He wept face down for a moment; then his sobs faded into absolute silence; and the silence was at last broken again by laboured snores in 2/4 time. Lombardi was now sleeping.

Schultz and I crept away from the desk on tiptoe, went out to the sawmill yard, and contemplated again the desolation there. Then we continued on our journey, still beneath the aureate luminosity, which by then seemed less like light and more like the incandescent ash of dead and cremated gold. We had to pass through more factories, foundries, spinning mills, and washing plants. Among their ruins wandered frantic men who hid when they spied us, as well as meek figures lost in thought who paid us no attention. By and by, we came to a kind of hill covered with the unfinished buildings of an urban housing development under construction. There were scaffoldings and heavy machinery; bricks and bags of cement were stacked here and there. And yet we didn’t see any architects or building contractors or construction workers, and it all gave me the impression of things stillborn. The first building was a mere skeleton of reinforced concrete: an enormous cage, an outline of ten floors and twenty apartments.

— In this cement cage, Schultz told me, lives quite a nasty old bird from Saavedra. I’m surprised he hasn’t sung yet.

He looked up at the top of the building, and I did likewise. Just then, we heard commands being shouted up there, the rebukes and threats of an angry man. Then we saw him come tearing down the concrete stairway linking the various storeys. At each floor he paused to bawl insults at invisible workers, his voice ragged and shrill, his fist raised. When he got to the ground floor, he rushed up to us, pouring sweat, and asked:

— Are you the new architects?

He was a big man who looked like a cross between a greyhound and a walrus, sour-faced, his skin tone excremental. His clothes were incredibly slovenly, and he stank like a porter at the spring equinox, house-moving day.

Adopting a ceremonious demeanour, the astrologer turned to me:

— Allow me to introduce to you Don Abel Sánchez de Aja Berija y Baraja, man of means, pioneer , self-taught man, and other boastful titles in the same vein, which he is wont to recite at bars, should someone stand him a drink (otherwise, he does not indulge). 61

— Drop the Berija y Baraja bit! shouted Don Abel, surprised and indignant.

— This man, continued Schultz, displays a lyrical virtue rare in our time. He has been devoting himself to the difficult mission of providing chambers for his fellow citizens. To that noble end, he has erected in Buenos Aires thirty apartment buildings, with twenty suites apiece, wherein his fellow citizens may enjoy a veritably paradisal existence, if only they pay an exorbitant rent. The dawn of his vocation, though obscure, is nonetheless honourable, for it stems from Don Abel Sánchez’s past practice in the traditional conventillos where — as recorded in the archives of the Justice of the Peace — he performed a great many altruistic deeds, such as throwing out orphans, widows, and the destitute who fell behind in their ludicrous monthly rent.

Don Abel stomped one foot on the ground:

— Enough of the irony, already, he grumbled. I am a man who…

But Schultz ignored him:

— It should be acknowledged, he added, that the twentieth-century winds of change did not catch him unawares. No sooner had he breathed in the novisecular breeze than he demolished his tenements and set about speculating in cement.

— Enough chit-chat! Don Abel interrupted again. I demand that you tell me whether you two are the new architects or not.

— What if we are? Schultz responded.

— Then, he shouted, why are you standing there like a couple of oafs? This building needs to be finished right now. I’ve already kicked nine architects off this job.

— Why? I intervened.

Don Abel’s sour face flushed with fresh anger:

— They wanted to put only twenty apartments in ten storeys! he exclaimed. I told them forty. Thank God, we can still put things right: the plans have to be corrected.

— Listen, Schultz rejoined. Do you want to put up a building fit for men or for rats? Have you forgotten the human body, too, has its dignity?

— I was educated by priests, Don Abel hypocritically refuted. And they taught me to humiliate the body.

— The human body! Schultz went on. The residence of the immortal spirit! The dwelling, albeit transient, of divine Psyche!

Don Abel inflated his thorax, and I saw something stir in his eyes, a fanatical gleam that gave me a glimpse of the true physiognomy of his demon.

— Did I say otherwise? he retorted heatedly. In all my apartment buildings, didn’t I sacrifice the bedrooms, the dining room, the living room, and the office so as give more space and luxury to that temple of bodily dignity known as the Bathroom? Haven’t I seen half the city fall into ecstacy at the sight of my built-in bathtubs, my aerodynamic bidets, my fashionable toilets? Did I not have full-size mirrors placed in front of my bathtubs so my tenants could admire every last detail of their intimate operations?

— Yeah, sure, Schultz admitted. And I hope the city shows its gratitude and honours you with an equestrian statue: Don Abel Sánchez de Aja Berija y Baraja mounted on a gigantic bidet cast in bronze.

— I told you to drop the Berija y Baraja! Don Abel protested again.

— I have no intention of filching your glory, Schultz growled. But don’t try and deny you’ve stolen from people their portion of air and their ray of sunshine.

— In exchange, I gave them a garbage incinerator and central heating.

— Which barely works, muttered Schultz. And besides, what about the children? Can children live in that cement cage?

The autodidact’s mouth fell open and stayed open for good while, as if he’d been left speechless.

— Children? he exclaimed at last. But, sir, do you think we’re still in the Middle Ages? Children!

He turned his gaze from me to Schultz, seemingly turning over an idea that didn’t quite fit into his skull. Next, he looked at the unfinished building: the autodidact’s face reflected the oblivion to which he was already consigning us, then deep attention, then calculation, and finally indignation.

— What are those fools up to there? he bellowed threateningly toward the heights. Those servants’ quarters should be narrower!

Furious, he tore off up the stairs. He again ran from floor to floor and hopped from scaffolding to scaffolding, brandishing his fist in the face of phantasmal workers and vociferating among the bars of his cage.

We didn’t climb the hill; nor did we visit any other building of the many that were going up there. Cutting to the left, we entered a barrio very disagreeable to the sense of sight. Full of anthropomorphic constructions, the zone was swarming with people who had been brutally twisted into numerical forms. Someone had wrenched those human bodies so violently that even today I seem to feel back pains just thinking about the hominids shaped as the number 3. And I say “swarming” with human numbers, because they really were filing in and out of the anthropomorphic premises like ants, a double line of them packing the most absurd materials on their backs. In spite of my repeated questions, Schultz told me nothing about this barrio. The buildings were starting to thin out, when we were stopped by a very high wall of vegetation. It rose before us like a living fence woven of thorny branches, privets, and creepers. We picked our way through the vegetal rampart, and when we came out on the other side, my eyes beheld the saddest garden they’d ever seen.