Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— You mean yours , you bunch of mulattos! 12corrected the philosopher, visibly piqued. In mine, you’ll see a cackling people who busily scratch and peck at the earth, night and day, never remembering sad Psyche, never turning their eyes heavenward, deaf to the music of the spheres.

By the time he’d finished this declamation, the malignant line had reappeared on his forehead.

— To conclude my thesis, I propose that a dun-grey chicken replace the dove of the Holy Spirit on the Buenos Aires coat-of-arms. 13And to top it off, I suggest that Doña Francisca and her Pythagorean crapper of a husband be declared historical monuments, and that they be provided with their own water closet so that visitors won’t piss on them. As author of such a useful work, I ask for only one thing in return: that Irma be immediately banished from Buenos Aires, packed off to her native Catamarca, 14shipping prepaid.

Seated at the foot of the bed and laughing abundantly, Adam Buenosayres warmly applauded the philosopher’s thesis. But Samuel appeared insensible to his guest’s fervour. On the contrary, whether because he hadn’t yet forgiven him for the tirade about Castor and Pollux or because he was having trouble digesting that “ criollo hash” so irreverently served up by his visitor, Samuel kept dolefully quiet.

— Poor Irma, exclaimed Adam. To cast out such a defenceless creature!

The philosopher’s jaw tightened, his mouth pursed in a bitter sneer:

— Defenceless? With her damned tangos and her buckets she’s capable of waking up every last reader of Teutonic philosophy, asleep since the days of old Mannie Kant.

As if moved by an ancient rancour, he added:

— That creature must have the devil in her. One of these days I’m going to wring her neck.

— Poor Irma! insisted Adam. What does she know about philosophers? To her, Kant is probably a Jewish pharmacist on Triunvirato Street.

Samuel Tesler was looking at him now with waggish curiosity.

— She’s a flower of nature, Adam concluded. Let us breathe her sylvan fragrance.

A tremendous guffaw shook the philosopher’s rugged bust; the straight line of malice joined the sinuous, sea-voyage line, etching a strange glyph. (“Look out!” Adam cried out in his soul.)

— It seems to me, said Samuel, that you’ve gone a little further than breathing her, O Poetaster! 15

Adam made no reply. (It was true, he’d said her eyes were like two mornings together.) But the philosopher, sensing an uncomfortable memory in his guest’s silence, didn’t let up:

— What I just don’t get, is how you can be fooling around with Irma while at the same time claiming to be in love with Solveig Amundsen.

(“Heads up, here it is!”)

He looked at Adam askance:

— So you give Irma your body and Solveig your soul? It’s a case of proportional distribution quite typical among the scoundrels who tote a lute around in this vale of Irmas.

The “name under reserve” had been pronounced, and Adam Buenosayres understood the battle was imminent. How painful that the name had passed the impure lips of the dragon! The name he himself hadn’t dared utter, not even in his Blue-Bound Notebook. But what to do? Tackle the dragon and tear from his mouth the sweet name he’d profaned? He thought about it a moment, then decided that if he attacked, he wouldn’t find out what the dragon could and must reveal to him.

— That’s ridiculous! he protested at last. A mere girl! Anyway, I haven’t been to the Amundsens’ for many a Thursday now. 16

On the offensive, he added:

— Speaking of the Amundsens, I hear you’ve been skulking around that house full of girls at all hours. They say you haven’t missed a single tea in Saavedra, and that for some time now — I can scarcely credit it! — you’ve had a manic attack of personal hygiene.

Samuel Tesler smiled, disdainful and bored, but something vital stirred beneath his armour.

— Yes, he confessed, I like the landscape in Saavedra, that broken terrain where the city comes to an end.

He obviously wanted to change the subject, for he added right away:

— And speaking of Saavedra, I haven’t seen any of those fat-assed angels that your friend Schultz says hatch new neighbourhoods.

With those words, the philosopher swung his legs over the edge of the bed, anxiously looked for his slippers, and stood up, thus offering a new perspective of his mutable nature: his gigantic torso was now perched atop two dwarfish legs, short, thick, and bandy. At the same time, his Chinese kimono was displayed in all its splendour.

At long last, the moment has arrived to describe this remarkable robe, with all its inscriptions, allegories, and figures. For if Hesiod sang of laborious Hercules’s escutcheon, and Homer of the deserting shield of Achilles, how could I not describe the never-yet-seen, never-evenimagined kimono of Samuel Tesler? If someone were to object that an escutcheon is not a dressing gown, I would reply that a dressing gown can nevertheless be an escutcheon, as in the case of Samuel Tesler — that unsung paladin who for lack of a steed rode a double bed and whose sole act of chivalry was a dream-state he sustained in dogged self-defence against the world and its rigours.

The kimono, egg-yellow in colour, presented two faces: front and back, ventral and dorsal, diurnal and nocturnal. On the right flank of the ventral face were depicted rampant neocriollo dragons furiously biting their own tails. On the left flank, a field of ripe wheat seemed to billow beneath the dragons’ panting breath. In the wheatfield, a farmer with a kind face sat cross-legged, smoking. His Chinese-style mustachios hung in two long shoots down to his feet. The right-hand strand was tied around the big toe of his left foot, and the left-hand strand around the big toe of his right foot. On the farmer’s forehead was emblazoned the following heraldic device: “Man’s first care is to save his own skin.” 17The pectoral area of the kimono showed a citizen blissfully placing his vote in a gleaming rosewood ballot-box, while a grey angel whispered in his ear. The voter’s breast boasted the legend: Superhomo sum! In the abdominal region of the kimono, the figure of Dame Republic was embroidered with threads of a thousand colours; she wore a Phrygian bonnet and blue peplum; her breasts were bounteous, her cheeks rosy, and she poured gifts from a great cornucopia over a delirious multitude. At the level of her mons pubis could be seen the four Cardinal Virtues lying dead in as many funeral coaches on their way to the Chacarita Cemetery; the funeral procession was formed by the seven Capital Sins, who wore monocles and smoked triumphal cigars, banker-style. Also on the front of the kimono appeared the preamble of the Argentine Constitution written in uncial characters from the sixth century; the twelve signs of the Zodiac, represented by the country’s flora and fauna; a table for multiplication and another for subtraction, both identical; the ninety-eight amorous positions from the Kama Sutra, very vividly rendered, along with an advertisement for Doctor X, a specialist in venereal disease; a horse-racing schedule, a cookbook, and an eloquent prospectus for “MotoGut,” a popular laxative.

When Samuel Tesler turned around, the dorsal or nocturnal face of the kimono was exhibited. It was graced with the design of a tree, its branches extending outward in the four cardinal directions, then turning back so that their extremities joined in the leafy treetop. Two serpents wound themselves around the trunk of the tree. One serpent spiralled downward, its head reaching the roots, while the other ascended and hid its head in the treetop, where twelve resplendent suns hung like fruit. Four rivers gushed forth from from a spring at the foot of the tree, flowing north, south, east, and west; Narcissus leaned over this spring, contemplating the water and slowly turning into a flower.