Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho.

– “The Angel, he killed the Devil, killed him hard by the Director’s spittoon. And Walker the Red, now free as God’s little sparrows, leaned into his typewriter and wrote a sensational feature in praise of the dawn. But the noble steel string of his soul had rusted, and when plucked, it snapped with a Ping! Oh, and the noble string snapped with a Ping! — heidy-ho!”

— With a hey-diddle-diddle and a heidy-heidy-ho.

Walker the Red had finished his song, and laughed uproariously.

— Good, good! he said. The brave comrade!

Suddenly serious, he looked right and left:

— Have you seen the Thief in His Forest of Bricks hereabouts? he asked me.

— He was around here, all right, I told him.

— I’m off to look for him, Walker decided. I want to suggest to him that, with Walker the Red, he blackmail the living God.

He joined the herd of tabloid-men. And then I felt Schultz take me by the hand and lead me out the door of the infernal shop.

The Slanderers, the Flatterers, and the Hypocrites had been lodged in the other residence. Their mise-en-scène was a vast field, similar to those where garbage is dumped and burned in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The astrologer’s fantasy, having interpreted Slander and Flattery as two forms of violence in polar opposition, had seen fit to conjoin slanderer and flatterer in a single monstrous figure, which as a whole gave the impression of Siamese twins. Joined at the thorax, the slanderer and the flatterer moved dissimilar arms and legs, trying to get them coordinated. Their two heads were separate, facing one another. The slanderer’s head, poisonous as a toadstool, was caustic in expression and oblique in gaze; the flatterer’s head was endowed with sensitive eyes oozing sweetness thick as jam. The twin monsters I’ve just depicted wore black on the slanderer’s half and white on the flatterer’s half. On their four arrhythmic legs, they went picking their way around little piles of burning garbage that gave off acrid smoke and no flame, or sinking up to their knees in the quaking bog of old tin cans, rotten boards, and barrel hoops. And even though the pervading smoke impeded visibility, I seemed to notice each of the monsters violently gesticulating in a dialogue between its two contradictory halves. In the same sector, though careful to avoid the monsters, roamed the Hypocrites: men and women of pious demeanour, downcast eyes, and clement smile, who wore long, rabid-yellow tunics trailing behind them through the fillth of the dump.

After a quick look around, the astrologer and I were just getting ready to skirt that zone of waste ground in search of better air, when one of the monsters, its two halves apparently in heated argument, approached us with its double head and its four badly coordinated legs.

— Take this gentleman, for example, said the adulatory half, pointing at Schultz. Could anyone who beholds him doubt that the gods have favoured him and granted him an illustrious lineage? One has only to observe his dignified bearing, his elegant lineaments, his delicate feet, and the ethereal hue of his complexion in order to realize that many refined generations have worked to produce this unique paragon.

The slanderous half of the monster turned venomous eyes on Schultz:

— All I can say about this man, he said, is that he has cast an impenetrable veil over his origins, a veil of romanticism that no doubt impresses fools, but which for the wise fails to dispel the certainty that some fundamental dishonour has rocked his cradle. The elegance of his feet is undoubtedly due to the astonishing fact that he manages to cram them into a size-eleven shoe, thanks to some trick recalling certain Japanese practices and causing him constant torture — all of which betrays his infinite vanity. As for his complexion, it didn’t come from any ancestral practice among the aristocracy; it’s the result of unspeakable habits, his addiction to staying up all night, and especially his weird diet; one suspects disgraceful cannibalism — the strangest stories are going around, and the police are already on the alert.

The adulatory half had listened to his rival with visible displeasure:

— You only confirm my argument! he exclaimed, contemplating Schultz with sickly sweetness. It is now beyond dispute that the type of congenital degeneracy you think you see in this gentleman stands as the firmest guarantee of genius. There are men of science who maintain that every brilliant creation supposes a creator rotten to the core. If you look carefully at this gentleman, you will find the stamp of genius in the angle of his face, in his imposing cranial cavity, and in his frontal lobe, which I hope has not escaped your clinical eye. But in fact, external signs are not necessary to trace the virtues of genius which Nature, not always magnanimous, has deposited in this gentlemen, for those virtues sing sublime both in his writings — texts that have taken the world by storm — and in his awesome erudition in sciences both human and divine which, simply put, has made him the scourge of the Universities.

— Bull roar! cried the slanderous half at this point. His work is the clumsiest plagiarism committed since the invention of writing! And I crushingly demonstrated as much in the anonymous letters I wrote, modestly disguising my handwriting, to newspaper editors and directors of publishing houses. Moreover, the erudition attributed to this sinister personage is all second hand, picked up higgledy-piggledy from poorly edited books from Spain and dreadful French translations. Thanks to this dog’s breakfast of knowledge-scraps, and his facile memory, this so-and-so pretends to be a genius, a pose that has him cantering across the entire spectrum of the ridiculous.

— No way! protested the adulatory half, grabbing the other by the shoulders.

— Hands off! growled the slanderous half.

— In any case, insisted the adulatory half, it must be acknowledged this gentleman is an ideal husband, the self-sacrificing father of eleven vigorous scions, a man who has made his home in the very image of paradise; in sum, a citizen whose civic virtues shine in two exemplary records, one in matrimony and the other in military service.

— Nothing could be further from the truth! thundered the slanderous half. After shacking up with a woman in coarse concupiscence, this man soon abandoned her and led her into twisted paths. The ulterior motives of his actions qualify him as a born cuckold, as has been demonstrated in the anonymous pamphlets I liberally distributed throughout the neighbourhood. Needless to say, the eleven sons for whom this gentleman assumes a highly dubious paternity now live off public charity and are already sliding down the slippery slope of vice. As regards his civic virtues, suffice it to recall that this gentleman is an army deserter, has sold out to English gold, and profanes the electoral urns with the obscene drawings he slips into his ballot envelope, gloating malignantly.

— That’s slander! roared the adulatory half, seizing the other half by the neck.

— Naturally, said the slanderous half, likewise clutching his antagonist around the neck.

They tumbled to the ground in a single thrashing snarl, snapping at each other like dogs in a fight. And while contemplating the monster’s wrestling match, we were approached by a woman wearing the cloth of hypocrisy. She was clearly an old relic, chastely garbed in a yellow tunic and festooned with infinite medals, scapulars, and crosses. Her left hand found support in a little ebony cane with an ivory handle; her right hand held an enormous rosary of corks.

— Brothers, she said in a humble voice. Might there be a church, a chapel, or an oratory nearby?

— Oh, boy! I observed to Schultz. It’s that annoying old bag who used to plant loud, sloppy kisses on the images of San Bernardo; the one who used to distract me during the Elevation by noisily beating her breast and generally showing off; the one who would lunge for the communion rail like a famished tiger, kicking and elbowing her way among the resigned parishioners.