Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

Despite my fatigue, Schultz’s words made me pause for a moment beside the yellow cone.

— Look, I told him, my ancestors were enthusiastic drinkers (sometimes I wonder if my family tree mightn’t be a grapevine). And I think they’d all enjoy seeing, through my eyes, the torments being suffered here by those profaners of wine.

— I’ve put them in a winepress, said the astrologer, pushing his advantage, where they eternally stomp rotten grapes to the sound of a sour, screeching, diabolical fiddle being scratched by a one-eyed fiddler from the province of San Juan, Vargas by name; day and night, standing on a keg in a state of demonic possession, he plays his moronic Malambo de la Cabra Tetona. 67Come and see!

But I was dying to get out of that turn of the spiral:

— No thanks! I answered. I don’t like solo fiddle music, and I can’t stand one-eyed men.

I took off in flight at a quick pace. Schultz kept up with me and charged again:

— In that black ovoid, he said, are the shopkeepers equipped with long fingernails and a short yardstick. Go on in and you’ll see them weighing an infinity of faecal materials, in scales as false as their smiles.

— Not now! I refused again as I took the final bend at a trot.

Schultz trotted alongside and, relentless as a horsefly, buzzed into my ear:

— Don’t miss out on the best part of the suburb. Let’s go inside that cube, and I’ll show you the misers of comedy and literature: the ones who failed at music because they refused to give it so much as a rest, those who stayed on their feet because their legs refused to give way, those who brushed immortality because they refused to give up the ghost, and those who refused to give even a tinker’s damn. And those keepers so devout that they kept the sabbath every day, or those who adored only an angel called Keepsake. And those thrifty ones who went mute for the sake of not wasting breath on conversation, those on whom jokes were wasted, and who never wanted for not wasting, nor could ever be dubbed Waster. And those who… 68

— Enough, already! I shouted, speeding up to a full run.

But Schultz in turn increased his pace and, swift as a greyhound, soon caught up with me:

— Listen! he panted. I’ve put them all in filthy chicken coops and settled them in revolting nesting boxs, where they cluck and brood over their bags of gold, snivelling with fever, rheumy-eyed, flea-bitten, flatulent, and reduced to utter decrepitude.

We were going along like this — with Schultz describing and me whinging and both of us running hell bent for leather — when I saw the exit door up ahead. Being the work of misers, and for the sake of not giving an inch, the door narrowed and shrank the nearer we drew. I made a dash for it, determined to get through the door no matter what, even if I had to dive through the keyhole. But just then I felt myself caught by someone who pushed me roughly toward a table that looked right out of some police station. In front of the table was a hard bench, and my captor forced me to sit down there. The astrologer Schultz, likewise captive, was soon sitting beside me. Only then did I see not only the two raving lunatics who’d hunted us down, but also a man behind the table who seemed to be observing us attentively, even as he adjusted on his cranium a gaudy brass crown.

— What’s this pair doing here? asked the man with the crown at last.

— Fugitives, answered the two lunatics in unison. They were only ten yards away from the exit.

— They lie! shouted Schultz, getting up from his seat.

A strong light was raining down on us from above. The astrologer sat down again and looked at me. And I looked back at him. Then the reason for our capture became obvious: looking at one another by the light of the beacon, we realized we were covered with the yellow dust so abundant in the Plutobarrio ; without a doubt, we looked exactly like the rich slobs who inhabited the place.

From that moment on, my memories are confused. My accumulated fatigue, plus the exertion of my last run and the tempting invitation of the bench all plunged me into a lethargy that made it impossible to keep my eyes open and no doubt had me snoring before long. Even so, I retain a vague memory of what happened before I fell completely asleep. First, Schultz turned to the man with the crown to declare that, “being who he was,” he enjoyed right-of-way through that inferno. To which the man with the crown answered: “You’re a liar and a yellow-bellied coward.” And Schultz, more offended by the overly familiar form of address than by the insult itself, asked him “since when had they been eating mazamorra from the same plate.” Only later did I hear from Schultz how the incident ended. The crowned man turned out to be King Midas, the famous plutocrat now fallen on hard times, and he demanded that Schultz undergo questioning to prove he wasn’t a fugitive if he wanted to get out of that spiral with weapons and baggage intact. Schultz accepted and took an exam which, as he later assured me, resulted in an exemplary display of pedantry on both sides.

— Do you think, Mr Midas had asked him, that the iniquities and depradations committed by the so-called bourgeois class, or third estate, warrant its being amputated from the social body?

— No, sir, Schultz had answered. Because by calling it the “third estate,” we are already saying it belongs among the others and in third place. Now, every class or estate is an organ with a distinct but equally necessary social function; and if we were to eliminate a given class, we would be left without one of those functions.

— Tell me what the third estate’s function is.

— To produce material wealth, said Schultz. And let us now recognize that the ugly bourgeois have been born with this vocation: they discover sources of abundance where most people wouldn’t see so much as a blade of grass.

— That sounds rather like praise, Mr Midas came back. So what are we to reproach them with?

— I do not want to insult your intelligence, Schultz replied, by reminding you that when a bodily organ, the stomach for example, fulfils its function, it does so for the good of the entire body, because the continued health of the former depends on that of the latter.

— A comparison as old as the hills! Midas rebuked quite scornfully.

— It’s old but still valid, Schultz shot back. Because if the bourgeoisie is the organ that innately corresponds to the economic function, it ought to fulfil its role for the benefit of the whole social body.

— By what law?

— Many, said Schultz. Would you admit the bourgeois are human?

— Hmm! growled the crowned man inconclusively.

— If they’re human, Schultz argued, they are subject to the great Law of Charity or Loving Intelligence; and they ought to obey it voluntarily by making sure the wealth resulting from their vocation gets to all those among us who do not have it.

— But they don’t obey that law, said Mr Midas. Therefore, they are not human.

— Let’s say they’re stupid brutes, persisted the astrologer. Even so, they would obey the instinct for self-preservation by assuring that material goods are distributed throughout the social body to fortify it. Because the preservation of one organ is subject to the preservation of the total organism.

— Enough of the organ, already! Mr Midas grumbled again. The bourgeois don’t follow the instinct of self-preservation, either. Therefore, they are not even brutes. What are they, then?

— There’s the rub! sighed Schultz. Every social estate or class has a virtue and an opposing vice. If its virtue prevails over its vice, the class will act justly. Otherwise, it won’t be long before its vice will lead it downhill into iniquity. In the third estate, the virtue of producing wealth is opposed by a fatal tendency toward selfishness and usury. That’s why Brahma (be he a thousand times praised!), who understood that the bourgeois, left to his own devices, would obey no law at all, placed him in the third rank of the hierarchy, so that the two upper estates might rule over him with a firm hand.