Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

Ruth’s arms dropped in a gesture of annoyance.

— But Mom! she objected. I’ve only got a couple of dumb plates left to go!

The shadow disappeared, muttering, and Ruth cast a despondent look around her. Misunderstood! All alone! Two little tears (two drops of morning dew!) sparkled in Ruth’s eyelashes. As she bravely plunged her poor hands into the dirty washwater, she looked around in dejection at the frying pan, the dipper, the hostile plates, the blackened pot, the whole jumble of vulgar kitchen utensils that had to be washed twice a day without fail. How sad! Why couldn’t people just eat carnation petals and Coty perfume, or pink pills and blue lozenges. Poor, lonely, misunderstood Ruth! Yes, a drudge. But they better not try to push her around! Just watch it! Because she too had a right to the good life, and one of these days she was gonna throw caution to the winds, and boy oh boy! Then they’d see what she was capable of! Pained, she looked down at her hands in the tub — coarse as sandpaper; the skin cream was useless; would honey-almond lotion work? Just then the jazz started wailing again in the backroom of La Hormiga de Oro. In spite of her woes, Ruth let slip a deep chuckle:

“Barbarians!” she exclaimed to herself. “They’re so out of tune!”

Adam Buenosayres had crossed the boulevard of death and was now entering the dangerous zone of the street. He cast his gaze along the first stretch: not a soul on the sidewalk! The bells of San Bernardo began to ring slowly, once, twice. Still early, lots of time. His eyes snuck through open windows and spied on the naked and rhythmic hearts of the houses: shadowy interiors, where tranquil women laughed; sunlit patios, vibrant with girls and games. Then his eyes went up to the sky as pure as a violet. The clang of bronze had released a scatter of pigeons, and now the belltower was gathering them back like fragments of a shattered peace being restored to wholeness. He looked along the sidewalk lined with paradise trees; they no longer reminded him of Irma’s arboraceous body, because their golden leaves were coming loose, gliding through the air, raining down silently like little bits of death.

“Dry leaf, golden leaf. The alchemy of trees: chrysop æ ia . 9R.F. trotting down Warnes Street is a dry leaf. Leaf of gold? Who knows! Tricky business, the chrysopæia of a man. Leaves fall downward; human beings fall westward, at least in Buenos Aires. That’s why R.F. is heading west: he’s setting like the sun. Should I make a note of the image? Nah, it’s dopey.”

The lugubrious ideas inspired by R.F. were doing their best to transmute into the stuff of art, but Adam growled his dissatisfaction.

“Hail, Autumn, father of cornball poetry! Show me a dry leaf, and I’ll automatically spit out a cliché for you. The sickness or privilege of seeing everything as a figure or a translation, ever since my childhood, back in Maipú. Trees, for me, were green flames full of sizzling birds. Time was an invisible stream, and its water plied the wheels inside the clocks in the house. ‘And love more joyous than a child’s funeral.’ A bit thick, I’ll admit. But even so, Solveig shouldn’t have laughed with the other girls, and she wouldn’t have if that imbecile Lucio… Whoops, it’s Fat Gaia!”

She stood at the corner of Muñecas Street by the big wrought-iron gate, a small child in her arms. Planted on two solid hams ending in feet sheathed in shoes the size of ships, her belly big and round, breasts torrential, body hair luxuriant: the whole of her was spherical but as stable as a cube. Beside her, an old man sat motionless on a straw chair, clutching a clay pipe, slowly drying out like a fig in the sunshine. When Adam came face to face with them, he looked away, then heard Gaia belch prodigiously. Without stopping, he looked into the woman’s eyes, but detected no vulgarity or offensive intent. Her eyes seemed not even to look; they were dilated, watery, absent.

“She’s absorbed in the mysteries of her internal laboratory — a brew of quicklime and sugars, fermentation of chaotic substances, distillation of juices. Gas erupts from her at both ends, it’s natural. Rivers of milk and honey flowing toward her terrible nipples. Gaia! Heavy with seed, weighed down with fruit, yet still working on new structures, weaving flesh and assembling skeletons!”

The child was sleeping, the old man disintegrating.

“Darkness is our before and our after. The child is near his ‘before’; maybe he’s dreaming of how things once were and he’ll cry over his loss as soon as he wakes up. The old man is close to his ‘after’; perhaps he already glimpses the dim colours of the frontier. I like old people, and this isn’t sentimental diarrhea, as that Hun Samuel Tesler would say. I like old people the way I like withered flowers, over-ripe fruit, autumn and twilight, things on their way out and on the eve of metamorphosis. But…”

Adam pulled up short, startled: “The blind man!”

The voice of alarm came from within.

“Have an eye for the blind man!” he repeated, then resumed walking with extreme caution.

He was coming close to the turf of a certain bandit known as Polyphemus of the Sharp Ears, whose fearsome job in life was to lighten the purse of passers-by using a technique as simple and ancient as humanity — the sentimental knife-thrust. According to local mythology, Polyphemus, the sacker of souls, suffered total blindness as a result of certain excesses indulged in by his forefathers. Be that as it may, Heaven help the hapless wayfarer who, scorning Polyphemus’s lightless eyes, dreams that he can escape his vigil! For although Polyphemus had indeed been denied all the beauty and grace of the visible world, his ears ruled over the eight directions of the audible universe. The wind itself, though it were shod in the gossamer slippers of the breeze, could not pass next to the cyclops unheard. Adam Buenosayres wouldn’t even have attempted this impossible feat, had he not found the blind man’s tricks and excessive theatricality repugnant to the point of indignation. It should have been easy to shrug off his spell with its cheap props, guitar and all. And yet Adam couldn’t shake the feeling that, as soon as the giant’s voice hailed him, a coin of his would ineluctably end up in the pocket of Polyphemus. The thing was to steer clear of the voice and the visceral commotion it caused him. Through what strategy? By avoiding his irresistible cry. But how? By slipping past the ogre unnoticed. With the help of what resources? Adam trusted in his rubber-soled shoes.

His plan complete, Adam stealthily advanced towards Polyphemus. No use! The cyclops was already onto him.

“It’s a man,” he reckoned. “Young fellow. But, what the… He’s walking on tip-toe! Huh? He wouldn’t be trying to give old Polyphemus the slip, would he? He’d have to be a magician!”

Adam could already see the blind man’s still, composed silhouette, his little tin plate in one hand and the stringless guitar in the other. Twenty steps away, he could make out the grey beard, tobacco-stained around the mouth; he glimpsed the mouth itself, sealed like a cavern liable to throw out a thunderbolt at any moment. Ten steps away now, and he could hear the giant’s deep, placid breathing — could he be asleep? He redoubled his caution and, just as he was sliding by Polyphemus like a shadow, the tremendous voice boomed in his ears:

— Aaaaaalms for the bliiiiiind!

Adam stood petrified on the spot.

— Give aaaaaalms to the poor man who sees not the liiiiight! insisted Polyphemus, savouring every vowel as though making sweet music.

There was no way out; Adam admitted defeat and threw a coin onto the tin plate.

— God will rewaaard you! thundered Polyphemus, raising the plate and the guitar over his head.