Leopoldo Marechal - Adam Buenosayres

— Monster! muttered Adam between his teeth.

But Polyphemus was getting carried away, malignant as a triumphant demon:

— God will repaaay you!

Adam Buenosayres, standing beside the cyclops, raised his eyes toward the Christ with the Broken Hand and told himself Polyphemus was right. Above the portico, Christ with the Broken Hand surveyed the street from on high; a rainbow-throated pigeon was perched on his head, snoozing, as if this were its natural resting place. What had he been holding in that hand, broken off perhaps by a stone flung at him?

“A heart, or a loaf of bread. Day in, day out, he offers it to the people on the street. But they don’t look up; they look straight ahead or down at the ground, like oxen. And I?”

Crestfallen, Adam momentarily felt the old, recurring anxiety.

“A squirming fish, caught on an invisible hook. The fishing rod must be in that severed hand.”

He saluted the cement Christ and continued up-street, up-world, critically eyeing the hat in his hand.

“Totally out of date, this hat — a literary curiosity! Kids used to shout ‘umbrella head’ when I was leaving school. Now they’re used to it. But here on the street… a public scandal. The nymphs in the zaguán , especially. Hang on!”

He pulled the reviled hat back on and automatically felt his pockets for his pouch and pipe. “Feel like a smoke. But not the pipe, not now, in front of the nymphs. Hat and pipe? That would be taunting the evil spirit of the street. I’ll buy cigarettes in La Hormiga de Oro. Yes, but I might run into Ruth… So what? An oasis in the desert.”

Adam Buenosayres crossed the threshold of La Hormiga de Oro and was immersed in a grotto. Faintly limned, the store’s thousand-and-one items appeared to cohabit on the most intimate terms: packs of cigarettes, twenty-cent dolls, shaving soap, detective novels, and boxes of caramels. All was steeped in the reek of fried fish. If the smell brought down the tone of the place, suggesting a low-life tavern, the ambience was somewhat redeemed by the uncertain strains of a shimmy being played further inside, on instruments forced into a grudging attempt at harmony. But where was Ruth? As soon as Adam wondered about her, Ruth appeared, a spider attracted by the buzz of the fly. She emerged through the green curtains separating the store from the backroom, listlessly, her face sad, eyes doleful: poor, misunderstood Ruth, all alone in the world. But when she saw Adam, she instantly brightened up.

— You! she exclaimed, surprised, jubilant.

— Good afternoon, Ruth! Adam greeted her festively. How’re things at La Hormiga de Oro?

— Not good, pouted Ruth. Our friends never visit.

A nervous hand flew to fix her tousled hair — oh my gosh, her head, an owl’s nest! With the other hand she gave her eyes a quick remedial rub — no traces of tears, please! Then she pulled up her stockings and gave her dress a quick shake — might’ve picked up a stray fish scale, anything’s possible in that infernal kitchen!

— Stay away from La Hormiga de Oro? Adam rejoined, giving her an appreciative look. You do yourself an injustice, Ruth!

— It’s been exactly eight days since you last dropped in, she sulked.

“A prettier creature was never conceived by woman after lying with a man,” Adam classically opined to himself.

— You’ve been counting? he laughed. It’s not possible, Ruth! Anyway, who am I that it should matter whether…?

He broke off suddenly and approached, looking at her eyes.

— Ruth, you’ve been crying.

— I have not!

She resisted, turning aside splendid eyes the colour of the horizon, feverish fingers raking the coppery bush of her hair: poor, misunderstood Ruth denied her tears.

— You have too been crying, Ruth! Adam insisted imprudently.

— It’s not true, I have not! she whined, pouted, resisted.

But why not? Why not confide her secret worries to this soulmate who was extending his brotherly voice to her like a bridge? Yes, yes! Poor, misunderstood Ruth entrusted her eyes into Adam’s safekeeping. Poor little Ruth gave in to the kindness of her brother in Art.

— Having to live with one’s wings pinned down, she mused. You, Mr Buenosayres, are an artist, and you must have had to suffer the same thing. One longs to fly, but one isn’t allowed to.

Adam made a vague, noncommittal gesture. Ruth jerked a pink thumb toward the backroom.

— My folks, she sighed. They’re as good as gold, that’s for sure. But all they can think about is money. They just can’t see what a girl’s got inside her, they just can’t. And then, when one sees even her friends are ignoring her…

Her voice broke, her head dropped forward, long bronze locks tumbled down over her eyes. Adam was thrown into turmoil. It wasn’t what she was saying, but the resonance of her voice, the warm depth of woodwind instruments. Where had he heard that sound before? The cry of a wild bird, perhaps, back in Maipú of a misty morn. “Beware the trap of sentimentality!” he thought. “Get her mind on another track!”

— Listen, Ruth. You know I’m a “man of letters,” as they call us now. Ugly, eh? I hate the term. (Now she’s smiling; that’s better!)

— A poet! she corrected heatedly.

— Yes, but nothing out of the ordinary. Look at me, Ruth. No long, unwashed hair, just a rigorously normal haircut, regular baths, casual clothes. This hat? Means nothing, it’s an anachronism. (Her smile dawns splendorous — the lovely bow of Love the Archer!)

— Joker! comes her reproach, even as she wraps him all up in her horizon-coloured gaze.

— No professional tics, at least not the kind you see on the surface, Adam concluded. Of course, there are other things — always in a lyrical daydream, forgetting things I shouldn’t… Do you understand what I’m saying, Ruth?

Yes, Ruth understood. And understanding him, she was beginning to glow with a subtle heat; and glowing, she shared in all the worries and concerns of her spiritual brother. She and he — weren’t they, after all, two birds of a feather? Yes, misunderstood Ruth could give him understanding. But Ruth alone silently reproached blind Destiny for its inability to bring together their twin solitudes. If only she and he could… Madness! And if… Oh, how wonderful it would be to wander together through the wide world, alone together like a pair of eagles, cutting life’s roses by the bushel!

— Yes, burbled Ruth. Poets live on song, they’re oblivious to the world around them.

— Like the cricket, observed Adam.

— That’s it, like the cricket.

— And like the cricket, they remember the ant when they’re in trouble.

Ruth frowned in puzzlement. When she finally got it, a trickle of laughter escaped her — two or three notes of crystal or water.

— They remember La Hormiga de Oro, The Golden Ant! I get it, I get it. The cricket is out of cigarettes.

Still laughing, the golden ant opened a carton, took out a packet, and handed it to her visitor. Then, placing her elbows on the counter, she stared at him and giggled playfully, swaying to the rhythm of her mirth like a tender reed in the wind. Adam stared back at her as he lit a cigarette. “Her even white teeth, wet with sap. A she-wolf’s teeth, quick to bite. The curve of her throat covered in fine golden down like a peach. And the braided copper of her hair.” A dark exaltation began to rush within him, especially when he looked at her laughing mouth. “A fig split open by its very ripeness.” Luckily, the music came to an abrupt halt; a voice in the other room was heard, scolding. Then, with a ferocious stroke of the baton, the musicians picked up the tune again.

— The boys in the band are practising some jazz, observed Ruth. Do you like that music?