Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

Here I interrupted him again:

— That’s turning the natural order of things upside down, I objected. Is it not said that knowledge precedes love and that no one can love what he has not previously known?

The storyteller’s hands flew to his head:

— Saints preserve us! he exclaimed. A Platonist! And it’s true, knowledge precedes love. But there’s a missing piece. If knowledge anticipates love in order to inspire it, knowledge constantly accompanies love in order to sustain it. The act of loving continues in the lover as long as the act of knowing tells him that what he loves is still the object of love; and it ends if the act of knowing announces to him that the object of love has ceased to be so.

Here the astrologer Schultz began to show signs of impatience:

— It hardly seems to me, he chided, that a Hell of Wrath is the most suitable place for an academic discussion on the art of love.

— You’re right, acknowledged the Man with Intellectual Eyes. But I’m glad we’ve had the discussion, because now it will be easier for you to understand the nature of the abyss that grew between Bellona and me as soon as the initial rapture had worn off. To know what I loved, or better, to understand what I possessed: such was the impossibility my amorous mind bumped up against. Bellona’s aspect changed every hour, like the moon or like the maritime face of the water whose mutations I used to watch from the windows of my study. Sometimes, in a sudden moment of unmediated presence, she seemed so close, so accessible, so rich in bridges and passable roads, that my entire being would hasten toward her; and on drawing nearer, I would find the bridges broken, the roads erased, and before me only a strange distance in the figure of a woman. At other times, when my being felt at the ends of despair, Bellona would fall upon me like a surprise wind, or like a rain shower no longer implored but that came anyway, by virtue of who knows what laws of mercy. Thus, between zones of light and darkness, I experienced first anxiety, then sleeplessness, and finally a crippling obsession that led me into an absurd, ongoing dispute with Bellona (only now do I understand!); for to demand that she explain the reasons for her changeability was tantamount to asking the sea to account for its mutations, its ire, its benevolence. Unfortunately, our quarrels, far from bringing us closer, only deepened the rift. Then I turned to the vulgar relief of drinking and gambling; they would dull my awareness for an hour, but later I’d wake up in bitterness and shame. How many times, in deepest night, seeking respite or forgetfulness in work, did I weep over the impassive marionettes I used to manipulate in my studio, or make them act out abominable scenes that were nothing more than the translation of the inner monologue driving sleep from my soul!

The Man with Intellectual Eyes paused here and studied us intently.

— The gentleman, he said gesturing at me, just alluded to the Platonists. They maintain that, through love, the lover gradually becomes what he loves; it is an act of amorous transmutation that ends in the peace of lover-converted-into-loved-one. Unlikely as it may seem, my conflict with Bellona originated in the impossibility of the ineffable assimilation; for, not knowing her, I could hardly assimilate myself to her, and without being converted to what I loved, it was unlikely I could attain the tranquility in love which is the goal and recompense of amorous movement. On the contrary, far from bringing me peace, Bellona unfailingly exercised the power to provoke an inner war in my soul; and it is fair to say that she accomplished this entirely without deliberate intent, by the mere fact of her presence, by her slightest gesture, by an innocent word. She was Bellona , after all, and too late did I understand the true meaning of her name! I never found out if her father, the artillery man, had chosen her name as a philosopher aware of her essence, or as a perverse genie who had marked Bellona with that name’s magical power, thus compromising her fate right from the cradle, and mine as well.

The storyteller paused again here, and we saw by his furrowed brow that the story was about to enter difficult terrain.

— Bellona’s death, he continued at last, brought my state of madness to an abrupt end. I still remember the astonishment and consternation that took the city in its grip on that unforgettable February morning when the fishermen returning from the sea found Bellona’s body floating on the waters. I had spent the whole night at the Casino. At dawn, on arriving home, I hadn’t been surprised by Bellona’s absence, being quite familiar with her morning habit of going out to watch the sun rise over the sea. From our house, it was only a short walk down the hill to the shore. There, she would walk out along the rocky point that penetrated the sea like the cutwater of a galley. I recounted all these details to the policemen on that terrible morning while they drove me to the Prefecture to identify Bellona’s body. I hardly know how to express the horror that came over me when I saw her stretched out on an ordinary table, her clothes still dripping wet; redolent of the sea, she was more beautiful than ever! For above and beyond her demise, her body’s defeat, in spite of the devastation already threatening her poor flesh, she was still Bellona, with her bronze hair in the form of a helmet and that warlike expression of hers which not even the ocean had managed to erase. Yes, she was Bellona! And the people with me realized this when I went to her side and kissed her sad eyes embittered by salt. Once the hypothesis of suicide was discarded (since none of our acquaintances doubted that Death, when it mowed Bellona down, had cut short an idyll in flower), the only explanation was an accident. This conclusion was entirely borne out by police investigations on the rocky spur, the indisputable site of the drama.

”Monstrous as it may seem, the following days left me with pleasant memories. Bellona’s death, poeticized in all the eulogies, soon had the effect of bathing me in a prestigious light. Not only had my circle of friends drawn closer around me, but new faces approached me and sought permission to share my grief. In public places I felt myself the target of sweetly compassionate glances. A reverent silence suddenly came over men and women when I addressed them; they would answer me in lowered voices, lest a careless word hurt me. And I, though not exactly aware of what was happening, let myself be lulled by those consoling voices, looks, and deferential gestures. In a word, Bellona’s death brought me what her life had always denied me: the dawn of an inner tranquility that allowed me to sleep once again and gradually restored to me the lost flavour of things. And that’s how things were going when “the first manifestation of the abominable” took place.

”I’ll need to describe in detail what occurred that day at noon (for the abominable made its appearance in broad daylight, as though not wanting to grant me the relief afforded by doubt, as is usually the case when abnormal events occur under conditions conducive to hallucination). And I shall insist, moreover, on the utterly commonplace details of that luncheon, so you may glimpse something of the terror that was to seize me when the supernatural so violently irrupted into a perfectly ordinary and peaceful milieu. That day, my friends and I were having lunch, as usual, in the livingroom-studio. The folding table had been placed beside the picture window overlooking the ocean. I had sat down at the head of the table, facing the sea, whose intense blue seemed to be wilfully coming right through the windowpanes into the room with us. Three of my guests sat to my right, and the other three to my left. One place at the table, then, was left vacant: the one opposite me. I must mention that during the morning I’d been showing signs of great vitality; for the first time since Bellona’s death I’d taken an interest in the set designs filling the room, sketching out a few artistic plans, and even playing with my miniature puppet theatre. After their surprise at my animation, my friends felt joy on seeing the revival of an intelligence they’d considered seriously wounded. And so in this auspicious atmosphere the luncheon began, with glasses clinking in timid toasts and voices still holding back their excitement. Such was the mood in the livingroom-studio, when the abominable appeared before my eyes.